At 6:45 on that cloudy and rapidly darkening evening, Lockington drove north on Clark Street. Wrigley Field loomed on his right and he stared glumly at the gaunt floodlight towers that were being erected on the grandstand roofs, far from operational now, but they’d be functioning in August. Night baseball in Wrigley Field—a sacrilege of unthinkable proportions, like a dice game smack dab in the middle of Vatican Square.
Olenick’s Funeral Home was located a few blocks north of Wrigley Field, up toward Irving Park Road. Lockington knew the place and a swatch of its history. In the good old days, Scarface Al Capone’s loyal hoodlums had been laid out in grand style at Olenick’s. Al’s disloyals had been buried along the eastern banks of the Fox River—not all of them deceased at the time of interment, it’d been rumored.
He swung west across southbound Clark Street traffic to pull into Olenick’s blacktopped parking lot, this maneuver arousing the ire of a creature in a maroon Cadillac. She clamped down on her horn and shook a fist in Lockington’s direction. He shrugged it off. Rare had been the day when he hadn’t had some sort of run-in with a Chicago fat woman. He parked his car, pausing to study the Olenick building before getting out—red brick desperately in need of tuckpointing, cracked stained-glass windows, cobwebbed concrete walks bordered by untended densiformis, much of it browning with blight, dying. He counted a dozen or so automobiles in the Olenick lot, most being older models, but none within five years of Lockington’s wobbly Pontiac Catalina.
Being a detective, and gifted with the excellent peripheral vision demanded by his profession, Lockington had spotted a tavern half a block to the south, a dingy, ramshackle, gray-shingled structure, Helga’s Place, wedged into a row of small shops, the majority of these having been vacant for years. The neighborhood had gone completely to hell, and to walk its streets was to invite sudden disaster of one sort or another, but Lockington had time, he had a thirst, and he had a .38 police special, so he hiked the few doors to Helga’s Place. Under normal conditions it was a joint he wouldn’t have been caught dead in, but circumstances have a knack for altering cases. The dilapidated tavern was all but deserted, its bar splintered, its stools teetery, the woman on duty two or three sheets to the wind. He took a seat and ordered Martell’s with a water wash. The barmaid, an aging, bony female in a baggy green jumpsuit, studied him with suspicious bloodshot eyes. She said, “Martell’s? Martell’s what?”
Lockington said, “Cognac—Martell’s cognac.”
The barmaid said, “Cognac? Looky, buster, this ain’t no fag joint!”
Lockington spread his hands. He said, “All right, booze will do.”
“What kinda booze?”
“The kind you’re pushing.”
“Thass better!”
She popped a murky shot glass onto the formica and poured from a bottle of Nolan’s Bourbon Supreme. By way of relieving the tension, Lockington said, “Are you Helga?”
“No, I’m the fucking Countess Maritza!” She broke into a hoarse staccato cackle, sounding a great deal like a motorboat hung up on the sandbar, Lockington thought, although he was unfamiliar with motorboats and he wouldn’t have known a sandbar from a butterscotch sundae. He said, “Well, maybe you ain’t the Countess Maritza, but I’ll bet you were a hummer in your day.” It was one of Lockington’s very best lines.
The acid seeped out of her. She took his ten-dollar bill, rang up a dollar, and fanned out nine singles on the bar. There was a wistfulness about her. She said, “Hey, mister, I wasn’t too shabby—no guys never objected to me dropping my panties!” She lit a cigarette and broke into a series of racking consumptive coughs. She spat into the bar sink. “Yeah, I’m Helga. You from around here someplace?”
“Sort of.”
“Uh-huh. Going to a wake?”
“Right—old friend of mine.”
Helga thought about it. “Old friends’ wakes ain’t all that much fun.”
Lockington nodded agreement, saying nothing.
Helga said, “I get the biggest chunk of my action from Olenick’s—sometimes six, eight people at a time, but they don’t never stay long.”
“You probably pull some ball-game trade.”
“Not much—I’m too far north.”
“You oughta do pretty good when they start playing night ball.”
She shook her head. “Doubtful. Nobody in his right mind would walk clear the hell up here from Wrigley after dark.”
A young man had come in, seating himself on the first stool inside the entrance. He was a hatless, sturdily built fellow, sandy-haired, clean-cut, with quick gray eyes and neatly dressed. Helga looked his way and he mumbled, “Just a bottle of Old Washensachs, please.” He seemed ill at ease, his knuckles rat-ta-tat-tatting on the countertop. Lockington’s experienced gaze noted the shoulder-holster bulge in his powder-blue sports jacket. He avoided Lockington’s eyes, turning self-consciously away to watch the Clark Street traffic crawl by.
Lockington gulped his Nolan’s Bourbon Supreme, understanding why the stuff wasn’t famous. He left a dollar on the bar, waved to Helga, and went out to head north. He didn’t look back. Looking back wasn’t necessary. He’d picked up a tail. He shouldered his way through the thickening dusk, wondering why.