Story Excerpt
More than a B-Lister
by Robert Greer
I have never liked Chicago—city of big shoulders, Carl Sandburg’s “hog butcher for the world”—and I take issue with the myriad of self-serving songs, poems, ballads, and jingles that trumpet that city’s supposed virtues. Why? Because twenty years ago, at the age of seventeen and against my father’s advice, I made the thirty mile trip to Chi-Town from my home in Gary, Indiana, in search of a glass-packed muffler at JC Whitney Auto Parts. I was hoping to score a part that would beef up the throaty sound of the Ford Mustang I’d coughed up $900 for weeks earlier.
When I ran a red light at Seventy-Ninth and Stony Island, a burly Chicago cop ticketed me and ordered me to follow him to a precinct jail. I was too dumb and naive to realize that the cop wasn’t looking for violation justice. What he wanted was a little green in his palm. I was booked and cooled my heels in a holding cell until my dad finally arrived to pay the fine for my release. Back home in Indiana, I got a stern warning about the risk of traveling the streets of America’s Second City with out-of-state plates.
But here I was, sweating like the proverbial pig in mid-August Chicago heat, fulfilling a promise I’d made to the woman who’d helped guide me through night terrors and hallucinations that, following my return from two U.S. Marine Corps tours of duty in Afghanistan, still sometimes haunt me. Anointed angel of mercy that she is, Janice Seguine helped me reset my sails. Now she was the one in need of help.
I own and operate Mid-Town Bail Bonds in Gary and do some bounty hunting and P.I. work on the side. Jan needed my help to try to keep her cousin, Roland Seguine, from being charged with the murder of his grandfather. My job, she’d said, kissing me softly on the lips before I’d headed for Chicago, would be to find out who had really killed seventy-six-year-old former jazz musician Cordell Seguine.
Although Chicago’s West Side is often portrayed as a poverty-
stricken, black gang-filled hellhole, it actually has a varied ethnic composition and a wide range of income levels—affluent to poor. The Humboldt Park neighborhood I found myself driving through was made up of post–World War II lower-middle-class homes, and I didn’t see a single gangbanger walking the streets. The residence I was looking for turned out to be a white wood-framed structure with a street-level walk-in basement apartment. An undersized apartment door and a barred window faced the street at street level. The main entry, a blood red steel door, was seven steps up from the sidewalk.
A late-model Chevy sat on a strip of grass that ran between the house and the hedges. A sunken-cheeked, boyish-faced man sat motionless on the top porch step. He eyed me suspiciously as I got out of my pickup.
“Looking for Roland Seguine,” I called up to him.
“What for?”
“His cousin over in Gary, Janice, asked me to look him up.”
He stood, arms crossed defiantly. I could now see that he was clearly more man than boy. Six-foot- two, muscular, and sad-eyed, he was bucktoothed and sported a patchy growth of chin stubble. He looked to be in his early twenties. His skin tone, Hershey’s dark chocolate brown, matched mine.
“And you are?”
“Karl Mandell. Middle name’s Clark—as in the candy bar. Most people just call me KC. I’m thinking you’re Roland.”
Looking confused and apparently too young to appreciate my candy-bar reference, he asked, “So why did Jan send you to check on me?”
“She told me that your granddad was murdered, and she’s afraid the cops might peg you as a suspect. Need to hear from you what happened.”
Roland’s eyes welled with tears. “Somebody drugged and shot him. Killed him for his damn violin. That’s what happened.” He slipped one hand into a pants pocket and took a step down toward me. Images of the tobacco-brown hills surrounding Afghanistan’s Pech Valley flooded my brain. In the time it took for him to retrieve a stick of gum, I was nose to nose with him.
“What the shit!” He dropped the gum.
“Sorry.”
He looked frightened as I moved down a step. “You on some kind of meds or something? Hell, you scared me half to death.” He slipped his cell phone out of a shirt pocket. “I’m calling Jan. She’s gonna need to vouch for your squirrelly ass, Tonto.”
“Do that.” The mirage of Afghanistan’s Kush mountain range began to fade, disappearing in sync with my accelerated heart rate.
The house Roland led me into was dark and drafty. A water’s-edge odor permeated the air. A second, less noticeable smell that I couldn’t immediately put a name to was also evident. I asked Roland to walk me through what had happened the day of his grandfather’s murder. He led me upstairs to Cordell Seguine’s bedroom.
“I came home from my Tuesday classes at UIC and found Pops slumped in his wheelchair. I thought he might just be napping and said, ‘Pops! You awake?’ When he didn’t answer, I walked over and eased him upright. That’s when I saw blood on the front of his shirt. I yelled and called nine-one-one. Fifteen minutes later, the rescue squad arrived. The cops showed up as the paramedics were leaving.”
Aware that UIC was shorthand for the University of Illinois, Chicago, I said, “Understand UIC is hard to get into. What are you studying?”
“Music, what else?” He didn’t sound thrilled about the choice. “Pops greased the skids for me to get in. He had connections.”
“Sometimes you need them in life.”
Roland didn’t respond.
“Was your grandfather totally wheelchair bound?”
“Pretty much. He had real bad arthritis, and that’s what’s so strange. The killer could’ve just taken what they were after, his damn violin, and split. No way Pops could’ve put up a fight.”
I surveyed the room. A bed, an empty bookcase, an oversized nightstand, a lamp, and a small TV were its only furnishings. Half-a-dozen World War II era model airplanes sat on the nightstand. An open five-ounce bottle of Testors liquid cement sat next to the planes. I pegged the odor I’d noticed earlier—superglue. “See your pops was a model airplane enthusiast.”
“Hardcore. My guess is he was preparing to work on his miniatures when the killer surprised him.”
I inspected the airplanes, examined the wheelchair, and glanced at the open violin case resting in the middle of the floor. “Wonder why the killer didn’t take the case?”
“Excess baggage, I’m thinking. And surely they were in a hurry. Just like the cops. You’d think the cops would’ve taken Pop’s wheelchair or the violin case as evidence. They just dusted the room for fingerprints; I watched ’em. Then they sealed the place with crime-scene tape and told me I could come back today.”
“Was the violin valuable?”
“Yeah. Worth eight grand or so. It was a Marcus Bretto. They’re made in Vermont.”
“Hmmm. A good little bit of change. Where did you go after the cops left?”
“I walked the streets for a couple of hours. Did a lot of crying, had a cappuccino at Starbucks, and spent the night at a friend’s.”
“How long before the cops gave you the green light to come back home?”
“I called the precinct early this morning, and they said it was okay. Didn’t seem to me like the cops were very thorough. Why all the questions?”
“Just covering all the bases.”
“The cops acted like I was a suspect. Hope you don’t think I’m one too.”
I stared at the fuzzy-chinned man-child. “How old are you, Roland?”
“Twenty.”
I thought back to when I was twenty, carrying an M16 in 100-degree heat and toting sixty pounds of gear. “No.”
Roland took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
“What did the cops say to you, if anything, about a murder weapon.”
“Only that Pops was shot with a small-caliber handgun, and they asked me whether there were any guns in the house. Oh, and whether Pops used drugs. I told them that Pops didn’t like guns and that he damn sure didn’t use drugs.”
“Did your grandfather keep anything of value in the house besides his violin? And did he have any enemies?”
“Nope and nope.”
“Would anyone besides you know the violin’s worth?”
Roland stroked his chin. “Horace Blanton, maybe. He’s a longtime friend of Pops. They were in the army together. He owns a pawnshop over on the South Side. I think Pops may have pawned the violin with him a couple of times. My sister, Lucinda, would know for certain. She keeps tabs on things like that.”
“Got a phone number for them?”
“I do for Lucinda, but for Blanton, no. He’d be easy enough to locate, though. His ads are all over TV. You really don’t need to call Lucinda. I can take you over to her place right now.”
I surveyed the room a final time. “Let’s do that.” I turned and headed for the door.
We were halfway down the steps when the doorbell rang. A squat fireplug of a cop met us at the door. For the next ten minutes, he quizzed us. When he gave us the okay to leave, remarking that he’d simply dropped by to have another look at the crime scene, I knew that Roland and I were now potential suspects in Cordell Seguine’s murder.
“That cop asked me pretty much the same damn questions yesterday,” Roland said as we walked to my truck. “What’s the deal?”
“They’re after a murderer, Roland.” I thought back to my past experience with Chicago’s finest, thinking, Too bad we can’t just slip them a twenty and make them go away.
If Lucinda Seguine hadn’t been flesh and blood, I’d have sworn she was a stage prop left over from some 1960s flower-child movie. Five-foot-eight, flat-chested, and split-rail thin, she was what in black vernacular we’d call high yellow—light-complected enough to pass for white. She was decked out in a loose-fitting polka-dot-printed muumuu with a chain belt and moccasins. The only things missing from her Vietnam War era Haight-Ashbury garb were love beads and a peace-sign medallion necklace.
The hug she gave Roland was genuine, the tears that followed equally real. After I explained my connection to Janice and why I was there, the three of us sat drinking sodas and talking softly in Lucinda’s echoey, minimally furnished apartment in Chicago’s trendy upscale Wicker Park neighborhood.
I got the feeling as we talked that unlike the apparently close relationship between Cordell Seguine and Roland, Cordell’s relationship with his granddaughter had been far from close. Sounding pot-brownie chipper, Lucinda asked, “More ginger ale, Mr. Mandell?” I had the urge to mock her and say, No, but I’ll have one of those delicious Perky Perk brownies stashed around this place somewhere. “One’s my limit,” I said instead.
Roland waved off her offer as well.
I asked, “Can we move on to Horace Blanton and if are you aware of any bad feelings between him and your grandfather?”
Lucinda looked insulted. “No. Mr. Blanton’s quite a nice man.” She looked at Roland for support. When he didn’t respond, she said, “Well, you didn’t know him like me, Roland, you being eight years younger and all. He and Pops used to take me for pony rides in Lincoln Park. It was so much fun. Ever so much more when Vonetta didn’t tag along.” She flashed me a childish, hand-caught-in-the-cookie-jar smile. I didn’t take the bait, figuring that I’d get the straight, untainted scoop on tagalong Vonetta from either Roland or Jan later.
“Do you own any firearms?”
“Of course not,” Lucinda shot back. “Do I look like some kind of right-winger?”
“There’s something else I think you should know about Horace Blanton,” Roland offered. “He and Pops both trained at Juilliard before the Vietnam War.”
I whistled. “Juilliard. That’s high performing-arts cotton.”
“The highest,” Roland said proudly. “Pops could have sat first-chair violin for any symphony in the country.”
Rolling her eyes and appearing unwilling to listen to another of Roland’s Pops Is the Greatest stories, Lucinda asked, “Anything else, Mr. Mandell?”
“Not right now.”
“Then we’re through,” she said with a shrug and stood. Roland and I followed her to the door. “Don’t be a stranger, okay?” she said, embracing Roland at the doorway.
Roland’s “Sure” seemed hollow.
Apologetically, she turned to me. “Please give Janice my best. We’ve never been that close as cousins, even though we’re pretty much the same age. And thanks for trying to help.”
“I’ll do that, and glad to help.” I found myself thinking that although Jan Cutler and Lucinda Seguine shared the same bloodline and were the same age, they were otherwise galaxies apart.
Lucinda blew us a parting kiss. “Take care, baby bro.” She stepped back into her apartment, eased the door shut, and disappeared.
“She is who she is,” Roland offered in defense of his sister. “Can you believe she’s both a published poet and a nurse?”
“Seems a little dichotomous.”
Roland smiled. “Yep. Tending to the sick and making up rhymes. Never have been able to figure the connection.”
Thinking, There’s a connection to everything, even murder, I nodded without answering.
Twenty minutes later, Roland and I stood beside my pickup on a crumbling stretch of sidewalk in front of his grandfather’s house. “Not much to go on so far,” I said, spotting a late-model pea-green Chevy with tinted windows lumbering to a stop half a block away. When the car came racing toward us, Roland dropped spread-eagle to the sidewalk. I stood my ground as the car sped by.
Roland rose and flashed the driver a middle finger. “You fricking Superman or something? Street’s a posted twenty. Around here when you see a car with tinted windows smoking toward you at sixty, you look for protection. This is drive-by territory, if you didn’t know it.” He dusted off his hands. “I counted at least two people in that car.”
Recalling my Windy City traffic citation history, I smiled. “Could be the driver had an important car part to locate.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” I walked around the nose of the pickup, hopped up into the cab, and rolled down my window. “I’ll be back tomorrow. If the cops come around again today, call me at home this evening and give me a rundown.”
“Will do,” Roland said, still perplexed by my unwillingness to take cover.
I eased away from the curb, aware that our recent speed demon had likely been on a flyover mission, not a mission to search and destroy. More than likely the car’s occupants were trying to gain a little insight into what Roland and I were up to. If they’d been looking to deliver kill shots, the driver wouldn’t have lumbered elephantlike to within a half block of us, exposing his position before burning rubber. No, whoever was in that Chevy was on recon.
The thirty-mile I-94 stretch between Chicago and Gary is white-knuckle road-warrior territory, no matter the time of day. You could guarantee that somewhere along that concrete-slab canyon floor, you’d be walled in by semis cruising along beside you at eighty and tailgated by an eighteen-wheeler hauling ass with a full load.
A few miles from Gary, I glanced in my rearview mirror and spotted a pea-green Chevy with tinted windows three car lengths behind me. Whispering, “Figures,” I took the mid-city Broadway exit. The Chevy followed, tailed me across town, then sped off when I eased into my driveway.
During dinner, Jan was full of questions. Why would anyone want to kill a sweet old man like Cordell? Did the cops have any suspects? How were Roland and Lucinda taking their grandfather’s death? Had I made any headway in my investigation and, finally, had I gorged on hot dogs or Polish sausages? I countered with several questions of my own, including one I’d never asked her before: How exactly were she and the Chicago Seguines related? Turns out Jan’s father and Cordell Seguine were brothers, two years apart and not at all close. Her father, the older of the two and dead for close to seven years now, had gone to work for U.S. Steel in Gary straight out of high school, remaining employed there until nine months before his death from emphysema.
Cordell had been a child prodigy, proficient on seven musical instruments. He was busy climbing music’s artistic mountain when the Vietnam War intervened. That war broke his musical stride. Afterward, he’d floundered, knocking around as a jazz musician, first in New York, later in New Orleans, and finally in Chicago.
When I asked Jan if her father had been jealous of Cordell, she insisted that he hadn’t. “Quite the opposite, in fact,” she said. “It gnawed at Daddy until his death that after the war his baby brother had turned to drinking, womanizing, gambling, and squandering his talent.” What had hurt her father most, she said as we cleared the dinner table, was that on the way to the destruction of his talent, Cordell had divorced his wife, Roland and Lucinda’s grandmother, and married a woman fifteen years his junior. A singer in a Chicago jazz band.
When I asked her whether Cordell’s second marriage had lasted, she looked at me, teary eyed. “It lasted longer than Daddy. Cordell’s second wife died from breast cancer. They had one child, a girl, when Cordell was in his early fifties. She’d be a half-aunt to Roland and Lucinda. Her name’s Vonetta Arnold now. She’s married to some socialite Chicago doctor now, an anesthesiologist, I believe.”
We surveyed our work in the kitchen and then resumed our discussion in the living room. Pleased that I now had more insight into why Lucinda Seguine had been so sour on Vonetta, I said, “Complicated genealogy,” and took a seat in my favorite recliner, prepared for the rest of the Vonetta story. Jan took a seat on the couch. I’d adjusted the chair to my liking when a flash of light arced across our living room window.
“Aren’t families always complicated?” Jan said, unaware of the flash.
The image of a pea-green late-model Chevy filled my head. I jumped up, grabbed Jan by one arm, pulled her to the floor with me, and whispered, “Be quiet and stay put.”
“KC, what the hell?”
“I said stay put and be quiet.”
She nodded.
I duckwalked my way to the oversized broom closet of a room I called my study, slipped my nine mm out of a desk drawer, and made my way back to Jan. “Crawl back to our bedroom, grab your three-eighty, and lock the bedroom door.”
“What’s going on, KC?”
“Do like I said, Jan, okay?” Light flashed in the window again.
I worked my way down the hallway that led to the garage, figuring that whoever or whatever was out there would either haul ass or start shooting when they heard the garage door opening. Hoping for the former, I eased my way into the garage and nudged the button on the door opener. The motion-detector light above the door flooded the driveway and a portion of the front yard with light. I caught a glimpse of someone bolting across the lawn, took off in pursuit, and tackled the intruder from behind. The sounds and smells of Afghanistan filled my head as I jammed the gun barrel into the man’s right ear.
“Please don’t shoot. Please!”
My mouth went dry. I swallowed hard and tried to think about fly-fishing high in the Rockies on a crisp fall morning. I’d been told by psychologists over the years that thoughts of pleasant images often ease one’s pain. Sometimes they did, but not this time. I needed something to stop me from reaching the dark place I was headed for. Another soldier’s voice, Kerry Samuels, perhaps, or my CO, Captain Jeffries, barking orders, or even the sounds of incoming. Things that I knew could break the spell. What I heard instead was someone shouting and tugging at me from behind. “Let him up, KC, let him up.” Tony Jerard, perhaps? But he’d been killed in a firefight near Gereshk. It couldn’t be Tony. I glanced over my shoulder to see who was giving the order. It was a woman. A woman screaming and shouting, tugging at me furiously. I recognized her and whispered, “Jan.” The spell was broken.
I handed her the nine mm and stared down at the whimpering, shivering figure balled up in the fetal position in the grass. Squeezing my right hand tightly in hers, Jan said, “It’s over, KC. It’s over.