Trip Wire_ A Cook County Mystery - Charlotte Carter [41]
Sim appeared in the doorway then, motioned me back there.
Indeed, Jones did not seem to have much of a sense of humor. But he did laugh at me when I asked if he could direct us out to Waddell’s place. He stopped laughing when I dropped my uncle Woody’s name on him. He finally agreed to call Waddell and handed the phone over to me. I told the froggy-throated kingpin how grateful I would be for a few minutes of his time.
No, he said. I had it wrong. He’d be grateful for a few minutes of mine.
5
The house was just off St. Lawrence at 107th. A big place with two well-groomed, deadly German shepherds in the gated front yard. I left Sim smoking a Newport in the Lincoln.
Waddell took my arm and walked me past a huge front room with clear plastic covering every turquoise sofa, chair, and lamp. It looked frozen in time, and it was appropriately chilly in there. Cold air clawed out at us as we passed it.
“This here is a treat for sure,” Waddell said. “I don’t get many visits from beautiful young ladies now I’m ah old man.”
I laughed girlishly, as if I believed his flattery.
I caught sight of a young man in the kitchen. He had a solitaire game laid out on the table and a black gun a couple of inches to the left of the ace of diamonds. Waddell didn’t introduce us.
We took seats in another big room, near the back of the house. This one looked more lived in, and it was heated. I was offered a drink from a cut-crystal decanter with a little silver tag—scotch—on a chain around its neck. Identical containers held bourbon, gin, and so on. I said I’d take whatever Mr. Waddell was drinking.
Waddell was taken aback to hear that I was one of the hippies living in that apartment on the North Side where the two kids were killed.
“What you doing in a place like that? Woody let you stay up in there?”
“He’s never been too happy about where I was living.”
“I’m surprised he ain’t grabbed you outta there.”
“He’s about an inch away from doing just that,” I said. “I made a deal with him. I promised him I’d get out as soon as I find—as soon as the police find whoever did it. But they’re looking in all the wrong directions. They’re even trying to blame one of our roommates for the murder. I’m trying to figure it out some other way. Just so I know. I have to prove I’m right or prove I’m wrong.”
“Why? Why you doing they work for them?”
“Because the guy who got killed meant something special to me.”
“That was your man?”
“No. But I thought he was great.”
I thought he was. Past tense. Suddenly I realized how far away from Wilton I had traveled in just a few days. Maybe it was just a matter of knowing, accepting in a way I hadn’t before, that he was dead and forever lost to me. But I don’t think that was the whole answer. Accepting the death meant acknowledging how far away he had gone from me. What I was remarking on now was how far away I had gone from him. Curious that of all the friends and strangers I’d spoken to, it should be Henry Waddell who triggered this insight.
“Anyway, there’s another reason I’m doing their work, as you say. The police are jerking us around. They’re playing some kind of game.”
“What you mean? They not really trying to find out who killed the boy?”
“I don’t know what I mean, exactly. I just know they’re doing it. Which brings me around to you.”
He popped his eyes. “What the hell I got to do with any of this?”
“Well, as you know, a bunch of us lived together. We had a commune.”
“Yeah. Black and white both, ain’t it?”
“That’s right. One of the guys is the suspect the cops are after—Dan. Another one is an older man. His name is Barry Mayhew. A white guy. I have reason to believe he spends a lot of time on the South Side, back in our old neighborhood. For one thing, he likes the food at Champ’s. He’s a regular. But I also think he gets the merchandise he sells from somebody in the neighborhood. There’s a big market for that kind