Thinning the Turkey Herd, page 1
part #4 of Jimmy Flannery Series
Contents
Praise
Title Page
Copyright
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
Praise for Edgar Award-Winning Author Robert Campbell
“Campbell writes with wit and vigor. The comparison not unflattering is to Elmore Leonard.”
—— Los Angeles Times
“Robert Campbell is an awfully good writer.”
—— Elmore Leonard
“Robert Campbell is one of the most stylish crime writers in the business.”
—— New York Times
Praise for
Thinning The Turkey Herd
“Fast, lean, offbeat entertainment.”
—— Kirkus Reviews
“Flannery is Robert Campbell’s most endearing character, a down-to-earth political small-fry who believes in the system despite its faults. . .He’s at his best in Thinning the Turkey Herd. . .a delight——a man who reason's, coaxes,makes end runs, compromises but never gives up until he’s satisfied that he’s got it right.”
—— The Cincinnati Post
Praise for Edgar Award Winner
The Junkyard Dog
“Dialogue so breezy it stings your eyeballs, spirited characterizations of Jimmy’s proud ethnic neighbors, and the ward healer’s cocky defense of the old ways, the old politics . . . You can’t help liking Jimmy Flannery.”
—— New York Times Book Review
“This truly innovative private-eye character moves credibly through a brawling, tough-guy atmosphere in a plot that’s both twisty and witty.”
—— ALA Booklist
“Written in an appealing argot, this mystery has full characters, a satisfying ending and a nice balance of hardboiled action and romantic tenderness.”
—— Publishers Weekly
Thinning The Turkey Herd
Robert Campbell
Publisher’s Note
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1988 R. Wright Campbell
All rights reserved.
Cover Design © 2015 Ayeshire Publishing
ONE
About a month and a half ago, the end of March, ex-mayor Jane Byrne is on TV. Out there in her trench coat during a storm what's churning up the lake. There's waves washing over Lake Shore Drive for the first time in living memory. She's acting fighting mad and asking just what the mayor intends to do when the real rains come in April and May if he's just". . .sitting in his office doing nothing" at the moment.
I don't think there's anyplace but Chicago where a candidate in the primaries would stand up and accuse the incumbent of being helpless in the face of God.
You got to remember that Jane beat the Machine in seventy-nine—which was not the first time the know it alls said the Machine was busted and rusted—over that business about ex-mayor Bilandic not clearing the snow. But she was very quick to embrace the old pols and play kissy-face with them even before she sat down in the mayor's chair.
Now she's hoping she can grab the rain as her issue and use it, not only to beat the man in city hall, but to beat every other player in the game.
While she's out there getting wet, the rest of them are staying inside keeping dry and thinking up dirty tricks.
There's even a rumor that the incumbent is going to run Independent and short-circuit the Cook County Democratic organization, run by Ray Carrigan, once and for all.
Democrats is switching parties to run in the Republican primary.
There's even talk of making the mayor's race nonpartisan this election. But nobody's paying much attention to that notion since its biggest booster is the late Hizzoner's son and heir, who's also tying on his track shoes one more time.
I've got my own ideas about who I'd like to see sitting on the fourth floor, but when the primaries are over I'll be working for the election of whoever the Democratic candidate turns out to be. The reason is because my family has been Democrats as far back as there's been Flannerys in Chicago. My old man was a fireman and a very active precinct captain. I work for the Sewer Department and I'm a precinct captain too. In the Twenty-seventh, which is close to the heart of the town and has a little of everything going for it.
I got to say one thing about what's a precinct captain. Some people think it means I'm a cop. I'm not a cop. I'm a worker for the party. I get out there and knock on doors around election time, but mostly I'm there in case somebody in my precinct needs a helping hand. This morning this old lady, Mrs. Seidman, stops me on the street and says, "You promised."
"If I promised, I'll make good, Mrs. Seidman," I say. "You mind kicking my memory in the shins a little bit?"
"The tree."
I don't remember her saying anything to me about a tree. But if she remembers a tree, but forgets she never said anything to me about it, I'm not going to tell her she's mistaken and make her feel like maybe she's getting senile or is getting that disease my wife tells me about. That Alzheimer's. That disease what sounds as bad as anything can be.
"My shin could use another kick."
"The limb. The tree with the limb what blocks the sun from my porch in the morning where I sit and have my tea and banana."
"Oh, that tree," I say. Sometime ago another old Jewish lady asked me for a similar favor and I forgot to do it and then she was killed. Getting tree limbs cut off so they should have a little sun in the kitchen or not letting them get cut so the sun shouldn't fade the linoleum makes up the bulk of the requests I get from the old people in my precinct, so you can understand I sometimes forget who asked for what and which tree is which.
"What about that tree, Mrs. Seidman?"
"Well, the limb's still there, ain't it?" she says, surprised at how dumb a young person like myself can be. "You promised me you'd have some men over, they should trim it so I can get the sun."
"You live on the third floor, second house from the corner, west side of the street?"
"You got it. Such a memory. See if you can make it work long enough to get that tree cut."
"I'll do that, Mrs. Seidman."
She goes into Joe and Pearl Pakula's grocery store, which is in the downstairs corner of the building where I live with my wife, Mary, on Polk Street.
"Just enough to give me a little sun with my tea and banana," she says from the doorway. "Not too much. It shouldn't be a bare stick."
So, I help people like that. Or see that a sick kid gets to the clinic when the mother and father are both working and can't make it. Or I see the water gets turned on when they can't pay the bill because the old man's out of work and the toilet won't flush. Or I talk to the assistant DA when some damn fool kid gets hisself in trouble which could only make him worse if he's tossed in Juvenile Hall. Sometimes I work it the other way around and see to it that some really vicious young animal gets put in the slammer, where he won't be able to terrorize his neighbors.
I'm very conservative. I want things to be the same next year as they was this year. Maybe a little better, but not different. I don't like different. I don't like change. I like good things to be passed from hand to hand in an orderly fashion. That's why I work for the party candidate. I'm not out to lead no crusades. I'm out to protect my neighborhood.
That's not what my wife, Mary, says. She says all anybody has to do is go "Ouch!" and I'm ready to put on my white armor and pick up my sword and go out looking for dragons.
She also tells me I could do a lot more if only I'd take the offer my chinaman—which is like what you'd call a patron—makes to me about the first of every month or whenever I see him, whichever comes soonest. Chips Delvin has been around so long there's them what says he really died a long time ago but somebody stuffed him and works him with strings. He wants me to be the ward boss of the Twenty-seventh. He used to be the alderman, too, until a lipstick lesbian by the name of Janet Canarias snatched that away from him. Delvin and the boys wanted me to run against her, but I wouldn't and Delvin never completely forgave me about that.
My Mary's not all that interested in politics, she's a nurse over to Passavant, but now that we're married I notice she acts a lot like I've seen wives act ever since I was old enough to notice. They can't seem to keep from beating the donkey with a stick, wanting him to go farther and faster, "for his own good."
In fact we're sitting at the supper table right after I make a call to get a crew over from Parks and Recreation, Shade Tree Division, about Mrs. Seidman's tree, and Mary's saying, "It's not for me, James" (she's the only person what calls me James, just like my mother—God rest her soul—used to call me), "it's for yourself."
"You'll pardon me, sweetheart, but I don't see how taking on a job I don't want to take on and giving up one I like is doing anything for me."
"For one thing, being ward leader, you can make certain you never have to go walking through the sewers ever again."
"Well that was just one of those things. Chairman Carrigan wanted to give me a slap on the wrist because I took away his face at the Democratic Party Solidarity Dinner. He gives the word to Dunleavy, down at Streets and Sanitation, who puts the arm on Delvin. So what happened is an accident."
"It's the kind of accident you should protect yourself against. Also, there's not a reason in the world why you can't take over Delvin's job as sewer boss when he hands over the job of ward leader to you."
"And get pinned down behind a desk?"
"You know and I know that Delvin's never even in his office. He stays at home with his feet up in front of the fire while Mrs. Banjo serves him whiskey in a teacup."
"You wouldn't want me to do that, now, would you?" I say, cracking a grin, but not getting one back.
"Don't get Irish with me. I notice, the older you get, you're looking less and less like Jimmy Cagney."
"So I've lost me charm?"
She gets up, rushes over and kisses me while I've still got a mouthful of tuna casserole.
We're having the canned peaches with cream on top when there's a knock on the front door.
When I go to open the door it's Alderman Canarias standing there looking very bad.
About a month ago she asked me to look into something for her. She says to me, "You have a nose for mayhem."
"Maybe I got a nose, but I ain't got the stomach."
"Well, if you would, I'd like you to ask around. Somebody's thinning the turkey herd."
"How's that?"
"You know how cops talk about gonifs and jinkey men, and lawyers talk about deep pockets? In the modeling business they talk about the turkey herd—hundreds of pretty girls posing in bathing suits and underwear hoping to get famous. They pour into town every year. Too many for the marketplace. It thins them out. This season somebody's thinning them out the hard way. Three pretty out-of-town would-be models have been found dead so far."
"How come it ain't plastered all over the papers?"
"The police don't think they're connected and dead women are found in Chicago nearly every day."
I ask around, but that's all I do. Now she's at my door and she don't even have to tell me what she's here about. She makes a sound like a cough which I know is a mouthful of strangled tears and says, "A friend of mine is missing."
TWO
Janet Canarias is a Latino, Puerto Rican, whatever with the blackest hair, whitest teeth, and flashingest eyes I ever seen. Besides which she wears bright red lipstick outlined with darker lines which can't help but make a healthy man wonder what it'd be like to kiss her. Right now she prefers women for companions but there was a time when she slept with men. "And may do again, Flannery, if Mary should ever up and leave you," she likes to tease.
I can't understand how some people can be so definite about how having sex this way or that, worshiping God this way or that, or eating your peas with a fork or a knife makes one way right and the other wrong. Except you can't get many peas to your mouth balancing them on a knife.
Janet is smart and honest and a good friend. That's what counts.
She looks a lot smaller than she usually looks sitting there at our kitchen table with her red-tipped fingers holding on to the coffee mug which she always takes instead of a cup and saucer.
"Wait a minute," I say. "You say your friend was supposed to be at your place but she wasn't there when you got home from the office? She's been gone overnight and you're already in a panic?"
"A night and a day. If Mary left Passavant but didn't come home that night and all the next day, wouldn't you be frantic?"
"Sure, but we're married and. . ." I bit my tongue. "That didn't come out the way I meant it. I mean we live together. I'm not saying that you and your friend don't worry about each other just as much as. . ."
"I know what you're saying. You're saying that you think what I have with Joyce is casual. We're both free to come and go as we please, so what's the fuss."
"I didn't mean that she was off having a one-nighter with somebody," I said, backpedaling like crazy and just getting myself stuck deeper in the mess I was making.
"Jimmy, Jimmy," Mary says, reaching over to take my hand, "you're going to knock your teeth out tripping over your tongue." She leans toward Janet. "We don't know Joyce, do we? You've never told us about her."
Janet leans back in her chair and takes a breath, calming herself because she knows that up to now words have just been rattling out of her mouth without making much sense. Mary's looking for a starting point so we can take it one step at a time.
"You ever feel like they're changing the rules on us almost every hour on the hour?" Janet says.
"Whoosh," I say. Mary nods her head and grins lopsided.
"Sometimes I feel like the brakes are gone and I'm afraid to put my foot on the ground to try and stop the wagon because it'll burn my shoe off," Janet says. Then she shakes herself and says, "Okay. I met Joyce Lombardi six months ago. I was asked to make an appearance at the auto show and I thought it would be good public relations. I meant to stay half an hour. I stayed for three, angling to meet this beautiful blond girl who was draping herself over the hood of a red car that was advertised to go a hundred and sixty miles an hour in ten seconds from a standing start. Joyce saw me staring at her and winked at me, letting me know she thought it was a lot of damned foolishness too, but it was a job and helped to pay the rent. Later on, when we were sitting together in the courtesy booth having a coffee during her break she said, 'Men'll get you laying down one way or another, won't they? Well, I'd rather get paid for draping myself on a sports car than a bed.'
"I could tell she was just coming off a bad experience with some boyfriend or live-in. I didn't question her, but she knew that I knew.
"She said, 'They've been giving you a lot of trouble too, haven't they? I read the papers and they tried to ruin you because you aren't gaga over them. Right?'
"'Well, no. They don't like it that I prefer women, but all the mud they slung was at the lesbian only because she was also a politician looking to break their legs.'
"When she laughed it squeezed my heart. You've got to understand, I've had my share of men and women, but I never slept around. Yin or yang, I was never an alley cat."
Mary glances at me. "Yin is the passive female cosmic element and yang. . ."
"I'm not altogether uninformed about Chinese dualistic philosophy," I say in a voice which puts her in her place. Janet don't seem to notice the aside.
"That's not to say I was always looking for forever with every person I got involved with. Now this AIDS is turning a lot of heads around. There's plain good sense in finding out if a relationship can travel a long road before skipping off with somebody. So, I wasn't there to take advantage of Joyce because she was feeling badly. I wasn't looking for a score. It was three months before we touched."
I know she don't mean holding hands. Everybody's got their own delicacies no matter how up-front they are about most things.
"I think Joyce found her real self in the relationship just as I did a long time ago with an older woman," Janet goes on. "I asked her to come share my place. She wanted a little time to think about it. She was supposed to call me yesterday afternoon and say yes or no."
"But she don't call?"
Her eyes fill up. "No, she called and said she'd move in before dark. I had a desk full of paper. She had a key to my apartment, so I told her to take a suitcase of her things home and we'd move the rest of her stuff out of her place over the weekend. When I got home about seven her suitcase was in the middle of the living-room floor, a tape was playing on the deck, but she wasn't there. When she still wasn't back by nine I called her apartment and got her answering machine. She'd put a new message on it."
"What was the message?"
