Floaters - A Jack Daniels/Alex Chapa Mystery Read online

  A small man with spiked hair sat behind a metal desk that was built long before computer monitors were common. He looked up at me as though he’d been waiting for someone, and I wasn’t that guy.

  “What do you want?” he asked as though that was his default greeting.

  I looked beyond him to a partially open door and noticed the shadow of someone on the other side.

  “Is that how you greet all your customers?”

  “We’re closed.”

  He tucked something into his hip pocket as he stood. This wasn’t a guy you showed your back to. He was short but solid, even his eyebrows had muscles, and his legs could’ve passed for fire hydrants in blue jeans.

  “Are you Marty Cleven?” I asked in my most authoritative voice.

  “What do you know about Marty?”

  “Nothing, except he was supposed to meet a man named Emil Candrolini here two days ago.”

  “Don’t know either of them. Time for you to go.”

  “Is Mr. Cleven here? I just need a minute.”

  “Time for you to go,” he repeated, raising his voice several decibels.

  I glanced beyond him again, and saw what looked like a man moving around in the next room.

  “Is he in the room behind you?”

  “I warned you, buddy.”

  He came out from behind the desk, reaching around his back as he closed the twenty feet of cracked grey tile between us. When his thick right hand re-emerged it was holding a tazer.

  I never had military training, never formally studied the martial arts. But you pick up stuff over the years. After more than a decade of interviewing all sorts of people, experts in a wide variety of areas, not all of them legal, I’ve learned enough to defend myself in most circumstances. As all four feet, eleven inches of him came toward me I was certain this was one of those circumstances.

  Mighty mite was just five feet away when I lunged forward and slammed my left fist down on his right wrist, sending the tazer tumbling across the floor until it came to a stop somewhere under the desk. Before he could snap out of his what-the-fuck-just-happened trance, I swung my right forearm into his chin and across the side of his neck. He dropped to the floor like someone had cut his strings, one hand rubbing his face, the other seeking the tazer.

  The shadows in the other room weren’t moving around anymore, they were huddled by the door. It was time to go.

  I reached back for the entrance door and noticed there were dents and a lot of scuffed metal around the lock. Maybe the damage to the outside knob was recent, because maybe these guys didn’t have a key to the place. I heard shorty growl something R-rated as I walked out.

  Driving through busy Lincoln Park streets, I checked the rearview a dozen times on my way to the third stop, an apartment above a small business in Rogers Park. Calling the police crossed my mind more than once, but I didn’t exactly have what you would call a friendly relationship with a majority of the Chicago PD. Besides, what would I say? I saw a guy who might have broken into an old warehouse with his friends, and I assaulted him because he might have tried to attack me because I wouldn’t leave when he told me to? I’d been hassled by cops enough over the years, and I didn’t want to add another unpleasant experience to the collection. So it was on to the third address on my short list.

  The sign on the door of North Side Plastics read Closed. Between broken slats in the lowered blinds I could see someone moving around inside. I found the entrance to the apartments around the side of the building, and the name on the mail box confirmed that Angel Batara lived on the second floor. But the amount of mail filling the box also suggested what I soon confirmed, Angel wasn’t home.

  An hour later I was sitting at Johnny’s Beef, eating a sandwich and looking over the notes I’d made, which added up to a whole lot of nothing. I finished lunch, got back in my car, and pointed it toward home.

  And that’s when I got the call from Zach.

  Four floaters in eight weeks. An attention-getting number. One death is a human interest story. Two can sometimes be the result of some sort of a grudge, or gang activity. A third can be dismissed as fallout from the first two deaths. But when the body count reaches four, regular folks start worrying that they could be next. And that sells papers.

  The scene along the North branch of the Chicago River was about what I had expected. I parked the car several blocks away so as to not draw attention to myself, and walked to the scene. The mid-summer sun that had recently baked the town to a crisp was still clinging to the late afternoon sky. Scanning the area for an anxious witness, a familiar face, or another reporter, I roamed the perimeter that the cops had staked out until I spotted Jimmy Gordon.

  “Hey, Officer Gordon,” I said just above a whisper. He turned and eyed me right away.

  “Chapa, I should’ve known you’d end up here along with the gawkers, bugs, and river rats.”

  Jimmy had been my pal since back in the nineties when I wrote a series of stories that helped him and a few of his brothers in blue get off on bum corruption charges.

  “What have we got here?”

  “The guy hasn’t been in the water for long, and it doesn’t look like he drowned.”

  “You got a name?”

  “Don’t think so, but all of this will be released to the press in due time.”

  “C’mon, Jim,” I said with a smile.

  He smiled back, though not as much, and appeared to consider his options.

  After a moment, he said, “Have I told you about my brother?”

  “Didn’t know you had one.”

  “I do, he’s an orthodontist, very successful, knows all the latest technology and shit. And he just opened his own office in Glen Ellyn.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “It’s a tough business, Alex, very competitive and publicity can be hard to come by.”

  “Sounds like he’s providing a fine and necessary service to the good people of DuPage County.” I nodded. “I could probably milk a decent feature out of that.”

  He returned my nod. We had an agreement.

  I watched Jimmy walk down to the river and over near a woman I recognized as Homicide Lieutenant Jacqueline Daniels. As Jimmy hovered around the scene I slipped behind an oak tree to avoid being spotted by the other cops. Daniels was a tough customer and a decent enough cop, but she didn’t take kindly to members of the news media. If she spotted me, Jimmy would immediately forget our deal, my name, or that he’d ever even heard of newspapers.

  She was surrounded by the usual array of police officials who were poking around the scene and carefully examining the corpse. I was so locked in to the goings on that I didn’t notice Jimmy had returned and was casually leaning against the tree I was standing behind.

  “The stiff is a white male, about six-three, under two hundred pounds, probably in his early to mid thirties. A group of folks on a river cruise spotted him floating by.”

  “That’ll ruin a nice day in the big city.”

  “No shit. He was found fully dressed, but without any ID on him.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “No word yet. I didn’t get that close.”

  “And he was floating, huh?”

  “That’s what I was told.”

  “Anything distinct about him?”

  Jimmy thought for a moment.

  “Oh yeah, he has a tattoo on his arm.”

  “What kind of tattoo?”

  “It’s a lightning bolt, could be prison ink.”

  “That’s Sam Preston.”

  “You knew him, Alex?”

  “Not for long.”

  2 | DANIELS

  Homicide Lieutenant Jack Daniels pushed her bangs behind her ear—seeing the streaks of gray annoyed her—and frowned at the body being lifted onto the stretcher. The man’s clothes and hair had begun to dry, and aside from the dull open eyes he appeared to be sleeping.

  “Tour captain said he was floating,” she said.

  Her partner, Sergeant H
erb Benedict, had liberated his emergency beef jerky stash and was munching on some sort of pepperoni stick.

  “I don’t get it either. Guy looks like he just went for a swim. Couldn’t have been in the drink for more than a few hours.”

  “But he was floating,” she repeated. The words didn’t taste right leaving her tongue.

  “Maybe he just had a buoyant meal,” Herb said. “Something light and airy. You want to grab a bite after this?”

  Daniels walked over to Phil Blasky, the county Medical Examiner, who was using a probe to take the liver temperature. Unlike Herb, who was portly and sported a mustache, Blasky was thin to the point of gaunt and didn’t have enough hair on his entire head to keep a mouse warm in the summer.

  “Eighty degrees,” he said, noticing Jack’s approach. “The water is fifty-five.”

  “Rigor?”

  “No. No lividity yet, no livor mortis. This man was alive a few hours ago.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “Can’t tell from a cursory examination. No visible marks on the body. Blue pallor, slightly cyanotic, but that could be from the water temperature. A drowning?”

  “When they fished him out he was floating.”

  “That’s odd.”

  Jack’s frown deepened.

  “Are his lungs full of water?” she asked.

  Blasky pulled a syringe out of his med kit, unwrapped it, then looked around for a place to put the wrapper. Herb took it, adding the garbage to the dozen or so jerky wrappers in his breast pocket; you always knew when Herb was around because he sounded like cellophane.

  “Let’s see.” Blasky pushed up the corpse’s shirt and angled the needle between the damp, pale ribs. He pulled back the plunger, getting a small quantity of blood and a larger quantity of air.

  “Suffocation causes cyanosis too.” Jack folded her arms. “Give his diaphragm a squeeze.”

  Blasky performed a partial Heimlich, there was a wet popping sound and something shot out of the deceased’s mouth and arced through the air. Jack tracked it down, squatting and peering at the asphalt between her black Ferragamo pumps.

  “What is it?” Herb stood next to her. He wasn’t built to squat.

  “I have no idea. Some sort of disk. A poker chip?”

  She looked closer. It was white, maybe three centimeters in diameter. If it hadn’t been stuck in a floater’s throat, Jack would have guessed it was a Communion wafer.

  Without prompting, Herb handed her a plastic evidence baggie and a wrapped pepperoni stick. She used the jerky to poke it. Metal. And thick, about a centimeter.

  She flipped the circular object over.

  Herb said, “Holy Guacamole, Batman.”

  Her partner’s comment was appropriate. On the other side of the disk was a picture of Batman. A close-up of his face, the caped crusader in three-quarter profile, looking suitably heroic. Jack maneuvered Batman into the baggie.

  Herb nudged her. “Should I call Gotham City, tell Commissioner Gordon that the Dark Knight has gone bad?”

  Jack stood up, smoothed out her skirt with one hand while holding up the baggie with the other.

  “You, my friend,” she said to Herb, “are too old to be such a big geek.”

  “Batman is cool. Can I have my jerky back?”

  Jack complied, then caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Two men were approaching. One, a uniform she recognized as a beat cop named Gordon. The other, a man about forty, medium build, with strong Cuban features punctuating a slightly sad face. Jack knew him as well. She shoved the baggie into the coat pocket of her blazer and put her hands on her hips.

  “This scene is off limits to members of the press.” She had some steel in her voice, and though her words were to Gordon her eyes were on the reporter.

  “Lieutenant, Alex, uh, Mr. Chapa here, he says he knew the floater, uh, the deceased.”

  “He can pay his respects after we release the body. In the meantime, if he’d like to go for a swim himself, the Chicago Police Department would be happy to assist him.”

  Alex Chapa took a step forward, something Daniels viewed as brave but not wise.

  “Officer Gordon, tell the Lieutenant I just saw this man alive a few hours ago.”

  Jack narrowed her eyes. “Did anyone see you two together?”

  “I’ll save you the trouble. He owns a collectible shop on Clark, has a closed circuit camera. You can view the tape, which will show you he was still alive when I left.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” Herb said, stepping up to meet Chapa. “You could have killed him after he left.”

  “I didn’t kill him, Sergeant. I want to help.”

  “Do you like Batman?”

  “Batman? Why?”

  Jack stepped forward, standing shoulder to shoulder with her partner.

  “Officer Gordon, take Mr. Chapa down to the station and get a statement. If you make him wait for more than six hours, I’ll buy you lunch.”

  “Sorry, Alex,” Gordon said. “Let’s go.”

  Gordon placed a hand on the reporter’s shoulder, pulling him backward. Chapa shrugged away.

  “Lieutenant Daniels, I know in the past the Chicago Record hasn’t treated you with the respect you deserve…”

  “Here’s the direct quote. ‘If Daniels paid as much attention to her job as she does to her wardrobe, maybe Chicago wouldn’t have so many unsolved homicides.’”

  “I didn’t write that. But it’s nice to know that someone still reads the papers.”

  “Not me, Mr. Chapa. My boss. He wasn’t amused, and neither am I.”

  Chapa attempted a smile. “I apologize. Still, that suit you’ve got on is very flattering.” He looked over at Jimmy, who was studying his shoes.

  Jack turned to the uniform. “Make him wait ten hours, I’ll see to it you get a promotion.”

  Officer Gordon again tried to lead Chapa away, and again the reporter twisted out of the hold.

  “Don’t you find it odd, Lieutenant, that this is the fourth reported floater in eight weeks?”

  “Potentially unrelated,” Daniels said. “If you knew anything about floaters—”

  Chapa interrupted. “—I’d know that bodies in water tend to sink for the first several days. They only float after bacteria begin to decompose the tissue, releasing gas. Those other bodies had been dead for weeks before they bobbed to the surface. Preston’s clothes should have weighed him down, kept him on the bottom for a while. I know this because I attended a forensics lecture you gave at the U of C about five years ago. You were excellent.” Chapa added, “And your outfit was killer. Red. I think it was Armani.”

  “It was Fendi,” Jack said.

  Chapa glanced to his right, viewing the corpse as Blasky fussed with a black body bag.

  “What is that?” Chapa asked, pointing to Preston’s right foot.

  Something was wedged between the victim’s ten dollar loafer and his wet sock. Blasky carefully removed it with some forceps and held it up. A small key.

  “Bag it,” Jack told him.

  “He doesn’t appear to be beaten up like the other victims,” Chapa stated. “The other three floaters had facial lacerations, indications they’d been worked over.”

  “No comment.”

  “And the others were men with money who turned up wearing polo shirts with country club emblems, and Italian leather shoes. This guy shopped at thrift stores.”

  “Still another reason why there may not be a connection. How many ways do I have to say, ‘no comment’? Officer Gordon, now, please.”

  “Look, Lieutenant Daniels, I really am trying to help. Don’t you want to know what Preston and I discussed? It could be relevant to the investigation.”

  “Officer Gordon will take your statement, possibly sometime within the next few days.”

  This time Gordon managed to get Chapa several steps away before the reporter slipped his grasp and came storming back

  “Why was he floating? Lungs full of air beca
use something was caught in his throat?”

  Now Herb got so close his nose almost touched Chapa’s.

  “And how exactly do you know that?”