It simply isn’t true that Brady Street, north of downtown on Milwaukee’s east side, is all bars except for an occasional coffee shop. Its several closely packed blocks have boasted at various times a socialist bookstore, head shops, the occasional gas station, and a body-piercing parlor. Mostly, though, it’s bars, with an occasional coffee shop.
The Ground Rules Café, for example, where Melissa seated herself at a white metal sidewalk table about twenty minutes after the cop had politely accosted Rep. She set a tall, cardboard cup of black coffee on the table in front of her, next to an earnest essay by a student deconstructing a Jane Austen novel that his first sentence referred to as Scents and Sensibility.
Next to the cup she placed the sample cigarette pack. She positioned it with some care, in a spot where it could be seen by someone from the second floor window of a frame building across the street whose address matched the one not crossed out on Rep’s note. The guy she glimpsed now and then through the window should be a photographer named Pelham Dreyfus.
Melissa reminded herself firmly that she wasn’t going to do anything silly. She was going to sit at the table; sip some coffee; read the essay; smoke one cigarette, without inhaling any more than she had to; and keep her eye discreetly on the window. If Pelham Dreyfus took a picture through the window, she’d see him and she’d have learned something useful. If he didn’t, she would have wasted some time.
After a fortifying drink of coffee, she picked up the pack. She took her time about it, as Cantwell had, teasing Dreyfus (if he chanced to be watching) and giving him plenty of time to react. Flipping up the top of the pack, she stole a sly glance at the window. Nothing. She paused and looked down the street, as if something had distracted her for a moment. She slowly took the second cigarette from the pack, gripping it with as much finesse as she could manage between the tips of the first two fingers of her left hand. She settled back, tossing the pack on the table with her right hand while she cocked her left elbow and rested it on the arm of her chair. She sat that way for five or six seconds, flaunting the unlit cigarette like a small flag.
She checked the window again. Nothing.
Again she glanced away. She toyed distractedly with the cigarette, as if she were thinking of something else. Twenty seconds of this, maybe, and she opened her purse. She quickly found the cheap Bic lighter she’d bought at an Osco drugstore up the block, but she went on pretending to look for it.
Another sidelong glance at the window. Nothing.
Well, she thought, here goes nothing.
She took the lighter out. She flicked it twice, with no result. Oops. She tried again. Nada. I should have sprung for a Zippo, she thought.
“Can I offer you a light?” a masculine voice behind her said.
Startled, she glanced around. The man who stood there wore a cream and mesh equipment vest and had two cameras with lenses of different lengths hanging around his neck. His elegant Calibri lighter worked on the first try.
“Thanks,” Melissa said.
She brought the cigarette to her lips and leaned toward him to accept the light. This was still an unfamiliar experience, and she concentrated on not blowing it. She almost did blow it, though, because as she inhaled a lungful of smoke and rocked gently back, she opened her eyes. When she did that she noticed a heavy, gauze-and-tape dressing running from the base of the man’s right hand to halfway up his little finger.
Take it easy, she told herself as she stifled a gasp. We’re talking about an incompetent burglar who almost blew a two-bit B&E, not a serial killer. This is still basically a lark.
***
On May 2, 1886, a small army of workers striking for an eight-hour day marched to the North Chicago Rolling Mills Plant on the south side of Milwaukee, intent on shutting it down. They met three companies of Wisconsin militia, intent on keeping it open. The strikers insisted, the militia opened fire, and all but six of the strikers ran away. The six who didn’t were dead.
Rep learned about this local tragedy, shortly before Melissa noticed Pelham Dreyfus’ bandage, by reading a historical marker at the site where the slain workers had fallen. He found himself within reading distance because that’s where his escort told him to wait until he was summoned into the Cold Coast Production building a few hundred feet away. Yellow crime-scene tape and swarming investigators kept them from getting any closer at the moment. Ninety minutes ago Cold Coast’s general manager had found Max Levitan’s body, shot through the heart at close range, in the conference room filled with Churchill books. Levitan had had Rep’s business card in his pocket.
The summons finally came. A uniformed officer escorted Rep to the building’s second floor and pointed to an African-American plainclothesman at one of the desks. After Detective Lieutenant Latrobe Washington introduced himself, he and Rep ran through a pro forma exchange of apologies and “no problems.” Rep explained how Levitan had come to have his card.
Occasional comments from Kuchinski had hinted that Milwaukee detectives favor a rough-and-ready business casual approach to on-the-job attire, but Washington apparently hadn’t gotten the memo. He wore a dark, two-piece suit, white shirt, and blue tie knotted right up to the throat. Rep had to look up slightly to meet the gaze of out of his well-seamed black face.
“Can you think of any reason anyone would want to kill him?”
“Nope. I talked to him for less than half an hour, but he impressed me a great deal.”
Washington showed him a letter in a glassine paper protector. The letterhead read:
UNITED STATES SENATE
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
COMMITTEE STAFF
The letter thanked Levitan for his recent inquiry and said that, as it implicated potentially confidential information, it had been referred to staff counsel for review. Rep noticed that the letter was dated nine days after the demand letter he’d sent to Cold Coast Productions on behalf of Sue Key. He knew a couple of people on the committee staff, but not the one who’d signed this letter.
“This was in a personal file Levitan had apparently started on Ms. Key’s claim,” Washington said. “Do you have any idea why he’d be contacting politicians in connection with that case?”
“No,” Rep shrugged. “The Judiciary Committee handles trademark and copyright stuff, but it wouldn’t get involved in a particular case.”
“Did anyone from this committee get in touch with you, maybe hint you should back off?”
“No.”
“I take it you’ll want to help in any way that you can,” Washington said. Just a hint of a tease colored his tone.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I would.”
“In that case, could you sit down for about forty-five minutes with that notebook-toting officer over there and run through this calendar/legal claim/burglary stuff in more detail?”
“Absolutely,” Rep said.
Any prospect of reaching Wausau with the sun still shining had just disappeared, but this wasn’t negotiable. Penny-ante burglary is one thing. Cold-blooded murder is something else. Whatever Sue Key’s case might have been up to now, it wasn’t a silly-season lark for adventurous amateurs anymore.