The Truth Can Get You Killed Read online

  Roosevelt turned on them, “You guys decide …”

  Wilson interrupted, “I’m not asking two males what is socially appropriate. How are they going to know?”

  “Why would I care?” Fenwick asked.

  Turner had heard Roosevelt and Wilson raising their voices to each other on everything from the most appropriate caliber of gun a cop should keep in reserve to the politics in the Streets and Sanitation Department in the city. He figured they must take delight in disagreeing since, over the years, neither had ever requested a transfer. Turner forestalled resumption in this latest round of debates, diverting their attention to the case at hand.

  “We need you to take charge of the canvass of the neighborhood on the Judge Meade case.”

  “Figured you’d need our help,” Roosevelt said. “What’s the story?”

  “Somebody popped him in the middle of the forehead,” Fenwick said. “Left him to freeze in an alley near Lincoln and Fullerton.”

  “Judgesicle,” Wilson said.

  “We’ve got McWilliams and a couple others out in the field freezing their butts off,” Fenwick said.

  “But you’d rather it be us,” Wilson said.

  “Copsicles,” Roosevelt said.

  “Yeah, but you won’t be dead,” Fenwick said.

  “Right,” Wilson said. “We only had thirty other cases we were working on.”

  “Doesn’t everybody?” Turner said.

  “Who’s got the results on the pool?” Roosevelt asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Fenwick said. “Couple people passed it around. I put my time on the sheet and gave my money to one of the uniforms downstairs.”

  “I’m working on a three-thirty dead bum,” Wilson said. “I think I’ve got a chance.”

  Turner and Fenwick returned to their desks in the squad room.

  Randy Carruthers entered and hurried over toward them. Fenwick groaned. “There’s gotta be a law against stupidity and the penalty has got to be having your head chopped off.”

  “Carruthers wouldn’t miss his.”

  “Yeah, what little brains he’s got are in his butt.”

  “Hi, you guys.” Randy wore a green, knit turtleneck sweater. The collar was caught in the folds of his double chin. The bulges of fat on his torso protruded prominently under the tight-fitting garment. He plopped his substantial butt on the corner of Fenwick’s desk. Commanders and acting commanders could safely intrude on Fenwick’s space. Anyone lower in rank perched at their own peril. No matter how many times Fenwick’s ham hand had swiped at Carruthers’ ass, the rotund nuisance never got the message.

  Fenwick’s paw moved quickly. Carruthers jumped.

  “Where’s Rodriguez?” Fenwick asked. Rodriguez was Carruthers’ long-suffering partner. Six years ago, Rodriguez had offended the wrong member of the police power structure and he was certain they’d assigned him to Carruthers in revenge.

  “Haven’t seen him in half an hour. He said we were supposed to go check out a report of someone carrying coal to New-castle. I’ve never heard of that part of the city. He said I’m supposed to look it up and find it. I didn’t know people still heated their homes with coal. Course, it’s so cold, you never can tell.”

  “Good luck,” Fenwick said. He made a show of returning to his work. Turner was already filling in the tops of several forms.

  “But I got to tell you guys,” Carruthers said. “That Judge Meade, you’ve got to find who killed him. He was the finest man who ever sat on the federal bench.”

  “Didn’t know you knew him,” Turner said.

  “I didn’t, but I followed his cases for years. He was showing those liberals a thing or two. He knew how to deal with them. I went to a talk he gave once.”

  Turner looked up and gave him an interested look. Actually being listened to brought a grin to Carruthers’ face. Turner could see the off-yellow front tooth mixed with the other grayish ones.

  “When was this?” Turner asked.

  “When I was taking classes at DePaul.” Carruthers was eternally taking classes. He’d tried law school but never went beyond a semester. He’d never got into the Social Worker program he’d applied to. “He came to make a speech. About fifty people attended.”

  “What’d he say?” Turner asked.

  “Just talked about returning America to family values. He spoke like someone who knew what he was talking about. Quoted statistics. He was very inspirational.”

  “Nothing radical? Any angry questions from the crowd?”

  “No. At the end we stood up and cheered. It felt odd in a room with only fifty people, but I didn’t care. I liked what he said.”

  Fenwick gave a rumble deep in his throat. Carruthers stepped back several paces. Fenwick said, “Randy, I think I hear your mother calling. Good-bye.”

  They returned to their paperwork.

  Carruthers gave them both confused looks which neither of them saw. He stared at the tops of their heads a moment and then left.

  Half an hour later, Turner’s phone rang. It was Ian.

  “Rumor has it you’ve got a dead Nazi on your hands,” Ian said.

  “How do you know these things?”

  “Sources. Are you working on the Meade case?”

  “Yes,” Paul said.

  “He was a hateful twit.”

  “I already know Judge Meade was not a member of the bench esteemed in the gay community.”

  “I’m organizing the celebration among all my friends.”

  “How many gay people really would have known who he was?”

  “Me. A few attorneys. I only know because I’ve written articles after this circuit has ruled on cases of interest to us. I attended lectures he gave.”

  “Carruthers says he’s been to a lecture the judge gave. Are you guys secretly best friends?”

  Ian snorted. “That man is certifiably straight, and I for one am glad of it. I didn’t see Carruthers at any lecture I was at.”

  Turner asked, “Aren’t judges supposed to be impartial? If they speak out, aren’t they prejudicing their cases or prejudging, or something?”

  “Lots of them give talks and state their opinions. They feel they are founts of wisdom. They get chauffeured to work. They are nasty, egotistical, and self-important. They have no idea what is going on in the real world.”

  “That sounds a little harsh.”

  “As far as I’m concerned they should have killed more than one.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind if federal judges all across the country suddenly start flopping over dead. Who else would recognize his name?” Turner asked.

  “All the people who read my byline in the paper and my columns, if both of them are in town that week. Not that many, unfortunately.”

  “Going to be a sort of a small celebration.”

  “We will make up in quality what we lack in quantity. Want to come?”

  “No. I’m sure I’ll be busy until late. I do memorize all your columns and I don’t remember his name coming up.”

  “Perhaps you’ve been fibbing to me all this time.”

  “I treasure every syllable you write. Maybe I was on vacation when his name came up.”

  “They’re leaving you on the case?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good for them. He was an evil man. You find out who did it, he or she could become a big hero.”

  “Still just a dead body with a killer to catch. Why did you call, Ian?”

  “To get the low-down inside dirt and cheap, tawdry gossip about the case.”

  “And pigs can fly.”

  “I think I saw that in a bar I was in the other night. Or maybe I was hallucinating.”

  “Hallucinating,” Turner confirmed.

  “You haven’t been in some of the bars I’ve been in lately. Actually I have a tip that we can’t possibly print. At least not for a while. My source on this is very unreliable. Maybe I’ll learn more as the day goes on. I’ve got the rather startling rumor that the dead judge was in a
gay bar on the north side last night.”

  “Which bar?”

  “He wouldn’t say.”

  “That sure narrows it down. How much credence do you except me to give to this?”

  “Enough so that, if it turns out to be true and I’m the source, I get an exclusive if you guys find somebody to arrest?”

  “Do I get to talk to the source?”

  “Maybe.”

  “In that case, that’s my answer. You say the source is unreliable.”

  “Highly.”

  “Get back to me when you get to trustworthy. I’m not going to believe some late-night, twinkie pick-up of yours.”

  “I am offended. It was not late and not last night.” Ian sighed. “I’ll try to convince him to let you interview him. I’m also going to keep working on my other sources in the gay community which, as you know, are legion. I smell a big story in this. I’m going to bust my butt on it.”

  “Call me if you get something useful.”

  Turner and Fenwick organized details and assignments for another half-an-hour. They made phone calls and connections before setting out to conduct their next interviews. The most basic was to the airline to check if someone had used the judge’s ticket. The official from the airline confirmed that the ticket had been purchased some months ago and paid for with a credit card but had not been used last night. No one had tried to get a refund. He was sorry to hear of the judge’s death and promised to cancel the debt.

  Turner hung up and gave this information to Fenwick. “So he was planning to go,” Turner finished.

  “Or it was a clever dodge.”

  “Or something prevented him from leaving.”

  “There’s a bunch we don’t know yet.”

  Minutes later, they left, taking a photo of the judge with them to show. The bitter wind howled as they drove away from the station. The weather forecast called for possible record cold overnight.

  They stopped at Aunt Millie’s Bar and Grill for a brief, late lunch. They found Rodriguez hunched in what had become, over the years, the booth in the back that Area Ten detectives called their own. Aunt Millie’s was one of the last vestiges of a grittier Chicago past in the recently upscale Printers Row area of the city on Dearborn Street just south of Congress Parkway. There had been rumors early last fall that it was going to be closed down by the city but, the day after the local cops heard about it, the rumors died abruptly. Cops packed the place at mealtimes and before and after each shift change, though, no matter what time of day or night, or even what item was ordered, all the food on the menu seemed to come out as mounds of artery-clogging glop.

  A waitress in a pink poodle skirt and rhinestone-studded glasses took their order.

  Rodriguez said, “Tell me good news. He died and I’m free.”

  “Who?” Fenwick asked.

  “The blob from hell.”

  “Last I saw Carruthers he was looking up coals in the encyclopedia.”

  “Dumb shit.”

  “He’s been worse than usual lately,” Fenwick said.

  “I hate how sunny and cheerful he is around the holidays,” Rodriguez said. “I thought him being gone that week before Christmas would be a relief, but he just got more frenzied before he left. Think about it. Who tried to organize that gift exchange? Who wanted everybody to get together for a drink on Christmas Eve? Who wanted everybody’s family to get together? Who wanted to play Santa Claus to all the little kids in the neighborhood?”

  “That last one was me,” Fenwick said. “I’ve got the build for it, and I like little kids. I’ve done it off and on for years.”

  “Not my fault,” Rodriguez said. “Anyway, he tried to do the rest of them and more. Being with him at the holidays makes me want to start a Scrooge Fan Club. I bet lots of people would join. ‘Bah, humbug’ is a highly underrated response to the holiday season.”

  Their food arrived.

  “Heard you got a dead judge.”

  “Judgesicle,” Fenwick said.

  Rodriguez grinned. “I like that. What time did he come in at?”

  “Seven forty-five.”

  “I’ve still got a chance on the pool then. I had six thirty-six. I may be closest.”

  “There’s got to be somebody earlier,” Fenwick said. “I can’t be out of the pool. It’s at least five hundred bucks. What’s wrong with the criminal element in Chicago? How can they let a little cold stop them? It’s New Year’s for Christ’s sake. You’d think a little murder and mayhem would be a great way to start the year.”

  “You’ll have to talk to Dwayne and Ashley. Last I knew, they had the sheet.”

  Dwayne Smythe and Ashley Devonshire were the newest additions to the detective squad at Area Ten. Everybody hated their know-it-all attitude and their inability to make arrests stick. They’d lost three major cases in the last month. The fresh-faced rookies had avoided Aunt Millie’s since they lost the last one.

  “Heard the dead judge was a homophobic creep,” Rodriguez said.

  “That’s out on the street already?”

  “On the radio. Your buddy Ian Hume was quoted on several of the all-news stations.”

  “I didn’t know the judge’s name until today,” Turner said. “How many of us know the names of federal judges, and we’re cops? We don’t get a lot of cases that go to them. I bet ninety-nine percent of the people in this city couldn’t name a federal judge, beyond one or two from the Supreme Court.”

  “And that’s bad?”

  “That’s typical.”

  They finished their meal and left. The first person they were to interview was the chief judge of the Seventh Federal Judicial Circuit, James S. Wadsworth.

  6

  Judge Wadsworth lived on Lake Shore Drive in a luxury high-rise apartment just north of Erie Street. He’d offered to meet them, however, in his chambers in the new Kennedy Federal Building, just north of Congress Parkway at the south end of the Loop and only a few blocks from Aunt Millie’s. He could gain them entrance to inspect Judge Meade’s office.

  The red steel and glass structure was across from the new Cook County Jail. The brand-new Kennedy Federal Building was something of a joke among Chicagoans. Every once in a while, a public building went up and was plagued with glitches. The State of Illinois Building had huge problems with heating and air-conditioning, among numerous others. From rats in the offices to leaks in the roof, the less-than-two-year-old Kennedy Building had come in for lots of criticism. One of the funnier headlines had been on the need to replace all the doorknobs in the building. Someone had ordered them all a half-size too small. The rumor was that the architect was living luxuriously in Tahiti.

  The judge met them at the security desk and they took the elevator to the tenth floor. The judge’s chamber was all blond wood, maroon leather, and bookcases crammed with books. He had a window that looked east over the Harold Washington Library to Lake Michigan, south on Dearborn, and even a little west to the Midwest Stock Exchange Building, which bridged the Parkway.

  The judge was a tall, slender, handsome man in his early sixties, wearing blue jeans and a white fisherman’s sweater. He greeted them gravely.

  After they were seated he said, “This is a tragedy. We haven’t had a federal judge murdered in years. I don’t know if we ever have. This is awful. He was a good judge.”

  “Was he?” Fenwick asked.

  Wadsworth’s responding look was not hostile. He said, “I think carefully about all the people who work in this jurisdiction. I make it a practice never to criticize my fellow jurists. Certainly not after they’re dead.”

  “Meaning there was something to criticize about Meade?” Fenwick asked.

  “That is certainly not what I meant,” Wadsworth said. “I speak very precisely. My words mean exactly what they say. None of us is perfect. Have you not made poor decisions or committed blunders you later regretted?”

  “We didn’t get murdered last night,” Fenwick said.

  Turner noted that Judge Wadsworth
paused before each sentence. His face, clear and unlined in repose, crinkled from mouth to chin whether frowning or trying to smile. The crinkling occurred before the beginning of each statement. A message of superiority, wisdom, thoughtfulness, and great weight was given to his every utterance.

  “We need to know the dynamics of the court here,” Turner said. “Somebody was angry enough to kill him.”

  “Not anybody here. This was a group of men and women who took their jobs seriously. These were people who knew they were given grave responsibilities and who worked hard to fulfill them. I’m sure none of them is guilty of any transgression.”

  “Didn’t his rabid conservatism antagonize his fellow jurists?” Fenwick asked.

  “No. You can look through all his decisions. Examine the record. You’ll see that he was with the majority more often than not. He was not isolated or alone. He had friends here.”

  “What about the public attacks on him?”

  “There is often controversy following our rulings. When you are in our position you have to expect that. Attacks are part of the job. Certainly no one presumes there will be physical danger. Nobody made an attempt on the life of a Supreme Court Judge over Roe v. Wade or the subsequent decisions connected to that case.”

  “But people have died because of that issue.”

  “Not judges.”

  Wadsworth was not aware of any personal animosities among the jurists, clerks, and any other employee. Nor did he know of any family troubles Meade might have had. In answer to their question, Wadsworth claimed he was at a political fund-raiser most of the afternoon then drove home with his wife and, subsequently, spent a quiet evening with her.

  They got the names and addresses of the people who worked closely with Judge Meade. If they had time, they’d get to them today at home. If not, most would be in to work tomorrow.

  Wadsworth called one of the security guards and, with him, accompanied them to Meade’s office. With bringing Mrs. Meade down to make positive identification, they hadn’t had time to inspect any papers at Meade’s home to see if they were significant or not.