Hip-Deep in Alligators, page 2
part #3 of Jimmy Flannery Series
"Which means what?" O'Shea says.
"Which means he worked hard with his hands and spent a good deal of his life without shoes."
"An illegal," I say.
"Probably an illegal."
"From Latin America."
"I'd say so."
"Will you be quiet, Flannery, and let the ME tell it in his own words?" O'Shea says.
"I was just trying to help out," I say.
"You helped out enough when you brung us the body."
"I didn't find it on purpose. If I had my way, I never would have been walking around that part of town in the first place. So what else?" I say to Hackman before O'Shea can say another word.
"The man wore an earring in his right ear. Somebody tore it out. Or it might have happened in the struggle with the alligator."
"Don't tell me," I say.
"The man died of wounds inflicted by an alligator's teeth."
"Now, how could you tell that?" O'Shea says, not wanting to believe it.
Hackman looks at him patiently. "Because I found this in the victim's belly." He holds up a tooth about three inches long. "If that isn't an alligator's tooth, I've never seen one."
"Well, that's the next question," O'Shea says. "Have you ever seen one?"
"I've been going to Florida for a week in the winter for twenty years," Hackman says.
Which seems to satisfy O'Shea that Hackman's an expert.
"I can hardly believe it," I say. "I always thought those stories about kids dumping their little pets down the toilet into the sewers, where they grew up to be pretty big, was just a lot of malarkey, except I myself have seen one or two alligators. Small ones and very dead."
"I thought they were urban-horrors tales myself," Hackman says. "It looks like we were both wrong. That gentleman there was chewed in half by an alligator."
"How long has he been dead?" I ask.
"The water was cold, but the weather's been hot," Hackman says, drying his hands and looking up at the ceiling. "There was no way for gases to gather in the bowel so that doesn't tell me anything, but fungus was already growing on certain portions. Then there's the rats. They hadn't found him yet, and why that would be, I don't know. So, an educated guess?"
"I'll take one of those," Rourke says.
"Anywhere from two days to a week," Hackman says.
"Anything in his pockets?" Rourke, ever the practical one, says.
"Mostly a wadded mess of wet paper in what was a leather wallet. Fergusen will dash it over to Forensics. They'll look it over and tell us things we could never dream of," he says, very sarcastic.
It's a well-known fact that Hackman hasn't got much use for any evidence discovered by anybody but hisself. Especially from Forensics, who sometimes claim they can tell what city you was born in from looking at a piece of your toenail.
"There was also a little loose change, a ring of keys starting to rust, a handkerchief, and a feather."
"A what?"
"There was a feather in his pocket. A pigeon feather, I believe."
Which reminds me there is this woman who calls me and wants to talk about her birds.
FIVE
I don't like to use the telephone very much. If I can't see a person's face before I know them, their voice can fool me.
It's not that late, and hot as it is, I figure people will be out on the fire escapes and the stoops of the six-family houses, catching what little breeze could be coming in off the lake, since very few have got air-conditioned flats to escape to. I catch the El over to the Back of the Yards, and there they are, just like I figure.
I go up to the first bunch of people sitting on the stoop down the street from the El station and ask does a Ruth Kuba live around there.
A big gazoony wearing an undershirt with his hairy shoulders showing and a can of beer in his hand, says, "Who wants to know?"
"My name is Jimmy Flannery," I say, "and I live over to the Twenty-seventh."
"So, what are you doing so far from home?"
"I gave you my name, I didn't get your name."
"It's Stosh Wyszynski."
"Polish."
"You're smarter than you look."
This gets a laugh from the other people on the stoop. There's an old woman with only half her teeth, who gets the news about what's going on from a handsome heavyset woman, her daughter or daughter-in-law, who speaks to her in Polish; two young women with bleached hair and painted mouths; and a little kid who looks wise for his age, like a little friend of mine by the name of Stanley Recore.
If he's anything like Stanley, he knows everybody's business, so I look right at him and I say, "I'll bet you know where this lady, Ruth Kuba, lives."
The handsome woman tells the grandmother. I catch the Polish word for "lady," said like it means just the opposite.
"I better go find a phone booth and ask this Mrs. Kuba where she lives," I say.
"Wait a minute," the good-looking Woman says. "I'm Dotty Wyszynski. My mother tells me to stop teasing you. She says you're Irish, but you've got a good face, so we shouldn't tease you. So what do you want to know where is Ruth Kuba and why do you want to know for?"
The grandmother is gaping at me and her eyes are twinkling.
"Thank you, matka," I say, using up a good piece of my Polish conversation.
She waves her hand and ducks her head with pleasure. I'm very good with old people, children, and some animals, if I do say so myself.
"She left a message with my friend about some birds."
"Are you a bird collector? I hope you come to buy them all," Dotty says.
"I don't want to buy any birds. I just came to find out what the trouble is about her birds."
"The trouble about her birds is they make a mess on the roof all over our clothes when we hang the washing out to dry," one of the young women says.
"Also one pooped on me the other day when I was going to work. I was late and I couldn't go back inside to change, so there I am behind the counter all day with this pigeon poop on my shoulder," the other one says.
"You could have wiped it off, Myrt," Dotty says.
They all laughed again.
"Well, I did," she says. "Of course I did, but the stain was still there, wasn't it?"
"Also," Stosh chimes in, "Kuba accuses everybody of stealing her birds. Who would want to steal her birds? They ain't baby squabs, yet. They're tough old birds she trains for war."
"I don't understand war."
"There's people raises birds all over this neighborhood. On the roofs. Every day, sometimes every night, they send their flocks up and try to lure birds from other flocks," the boy says. "It's like a game."
"So, flying birds is this lady's hobby?"
"It is, and it isn't," Stosh says.
"My brother likes to make a mystery," Dotty says. "Some people thinks she's raising the pigeons for sport, some say she has them to eat, and some say she tells fortunes by tearing their little bellies open and reading what she sees in the guts."
"Where does this Ruth Kuba come from?"
"She comes from Haiti," Stosh says.
"A black woman."
"Like the ace of spades," Stosh says. "The blacks and spies is taking over Chicago."
"This is all very good to know," I say, "but I still don't know how to find her."
"Weenie'll show you."
"For a dollar I'll show you," the kid, Weenie, says.
"I'll give you a quarter."
"Seventy-five cents."
We settle on a half.
Stosh says, "Why don't you have a beer first?" now that things are ironed out between us.
I tell him I got to find out what Ruth Kuba wants and go on home because my friend will worry about me if I'm out too late.
All of this is getting back to the old lady through Dotty. Matka says something and Dotty laughs.
"What did she say?" I ask.
"I told her what you said about your friend, and my mother says you should tell your friend to feed you better. You're too skinny. She says you come over some night, she makes you blini and kielbasa."
I tell her my father and me go to Blatna's Sold Out Saloon over to the Thirty-Fourth on the Northwest Side, which has the reputation of making the best sausage and cabbage in Chicago, which Dotty tells the old woman, who tells her some thing back.
"My mother says Blatna's cook isn't good enough to light her stove. Her offer's always open."
So I say one day maybe I'll come walking by around suppertime and take her up on the offer.
Then me and Weenie go down the street and around the corner.
"How come they call you Weenie?" I say.
"Ain't it a terrible thing to do, hanging a name like that on a little kid? You think it could be something dirty? Like my brother's always telling me to keep my hands out of my pockets and stop playing with my you-know-what."
"You don't have to call yourself Weenie, you don't want to."
"What choice have I got? My real name's Aloysius, and ain't that enough to give you the pip? Here's where the witch lives. Top floor on the right."
I give him a buck. He looks at it like it might not be real and says, "The deal was four bits."
"Well, I couldn't let you beat me for the price in front of everybody, could I? "
"You got a head on your shoulders, Jimmy Flannery," he says. "You could go far."
SIX
You walk up the six flights of stairs in the bellies of these old tenements and you can practically tell what kind of people are living in the flats from the smells seeping through the doors. On the first floor I know there's Jews what keep kosher from the smell of brine and pickles, on the second there's got to be an Italian family because the smell of sour wine and garlic is so strong I can practically make a meal out of it.
The smells on the third floor are like nothing I ever smelled before: hot and spicy like cinnamon and red peppers, with some kind of heavy flower smell underneath.
The pebbled glass that is in the center panel of most of the doors to these flats has been replaced with red glass. On the wood above it is some kind of collection of little white bones and feathers.
I don't even knock and the door opens.
This huge woman is standing there. I never see anything like her. First of all, big as she is, with hips like a donkey carrying those baskets on its sides like you see in the travelogues, and breasts like big round loaves of bread, she's got a face so beautiful it could stop your heart. I don't know how to put words to the way she looked, so why should I even try. Except maybe I should say she has bright-blue eyes, which in my experience is a very rare thing to see in a black face. Which is not really black, but a sort of mahogany with a red blush underneath the skin.
She's got on this folded bandanna around her head which looks like a colored bird in flight, and her dress is covered with a big apron as white as snow, with here and there a little drip of what looks like bird shit.
"You come for a reading because you got the troubles," she said in a voice that almost gets the red glass vibrating.
"No, I come because a lady by the name of Ruth Kuba. . ."
"I is she."
". . .I figured that. . .called my house and left a message with my friend I should get in touch with her."
"And you are Mr. James Flannery, then?"
"I was on my way home and I thought I'd stop by to see you in person, Mrs. Kuba. . ."
"You call me Ruth."
". . .because I don't like to meet people on the phone for the first time, Ruth."
"I am most pleased to meet you," she says, and sticks out her hand for me to shake. It's half as big again as mine and very cool, which surprises me because it must be a hundred and five up here on the top floor under the roof. "Come in."
She turns around and walks down the hallway like she expects me to follow her, which I do, after walking in and shutting the door. She makes a right up ahead into what turns out to be the dining room. I pass a door on my left, which I guess is the bathroom because all these six-family flats is laid out much the same. There's a murmuring coming from inside, which is an unexpected sound to hear in somebody's flat, and one that makes me nervous because I can't put my finger on what's making it.
She walks through the dining room, which is made up like a cave with gray cloth drapes on all the walls, end opens up a pair of sliding doors into the parlor.
When I was very little, we used to go over to my grandmother's house, who lived in a flat over to Manistee Street in the Tenth on the Southeast Side, which is now Alderman "Fast Eddie" Vrdolyak's ward. My grandfather worked with the Polish in the original steelworks at a Hundred-and-ninth, which is why I get along so good with the Polacks.
Anyway my grandmother used her flat just like this Mrs. Kuba uses her flat, except she didn't make no cave out of the dining room. The bedrooms was for sleeping, the kitchen for living in, and the parlor was opened up only for special occasions and waking the dead.
This parlor even looks a lot like my grandmother's used to look, with white sheets over practically every piece of furniture.
"You'll excuse me I don't take the sheets off the chairs," Ruth Kuba says. "I didn't expect any company."
"I'm not company, Ruth. I'm just somebody you asked to call you, and here I am."
"Sit down anyway, you're still a guest. Can I get you something to drink?"
"I don't think so."
"A nice glass of herb tea?"
"It's very hot for tea," I say.
"This tea cools the blood."
If I refuse too many offers of hospitality, it will cause her some anxiety and it could be hard for us to be comfortable, so finally I say yes.
She comes back in only a minute with two glasses of steaming tea sitting in little woven rattan baskets, you shouldn't burn your hand. A twig of something that smells very sharp but good is sticking up out of each glass.
"That's to stir, also to chew a little," she says. "Don't worry, it's nothing but natural licorice, which is good for the blood and also constipation." I tell her that I'm happy to say I'm not troubled that way, but I'm glad to find out about what natural licorice can do since a lot of people I know have troubles like those she describes.
By this time, talking about such intimate but natural functions, we're friends.
"Now, how can I be of service?" I say.
"Somebody tells me you have influence. at City Hall."
"I'm known to most of the people at City Hall, I can't deny it. But what influence I got down there at the moment ain't very much. Besides, if this thing you want to talk to me about has to do with things political, maybe you should talk to your precinct captain in the neighborhood. You see, this is not even my ward. I'm from the Twenty-seventh, and people who do what I do are very jealous. You shouldn't stick your nose in the business of some other ward."
"I understand that. It is all tribal, don't we know it ?"
"I suppose it is. So, if you don't want to ask your neighbors who's your precinct captain, I can find out for you and let you know."
"I don't understand how everything works in your city yet but it has always done me better to go to the man who has the right ear in his pocket than just any old body."
"What makes you think I got the right ear? If this has anything to do with birds, it's really outside the area of my expertise."
"It has to do with birds. Somebody has been stealing my pigeons in great numbers."
"Is these the pigeons you use to tell fortunes?"
She broke out laughing. "Oh, these funny white people. They come to me to know the future, to buy a little of this love potion, a little of that get-back-at-them powder. They make fun of the ignorant woman from the island, but they come to her to have their cancers cleared up by witchcraft."
"I hope you're not telling them you can do that."
"If it's bad sickness, I'm telling them to see a doctor. If it's a cold or a stomachache, I guess I can treat for them as good as your old grandmother must have done."
"So, how are they funny?"
"They come to me, and then behind my back they spread stories of terrible things: how I cut up cats and toads, how I tear out the bellies of little pigeons and read the signs in their guts. Such nonsense. Such foolishness."
"Then you keep them just to play war games with other flocks on the roof?"
She waves one of her big graceful hands and looks at me sidelong as though only she and me know how silly people can get. "I got no time for such damn foolishness. I have a living to make. I won't take no welfare. I won't take no charity. I tell the future. I sell some potions. I sit with babies and with the dying. I make this and that, things to wear and things to eat. I raise birds to sell."
"For food?"
She laughs again. The way she laughs, you know she's not laughing at you because you're stupid but because you said something funny, on account you got no way of knowing what's what, and she's having a lot of pleasure from your company and your conversation.
"These birds are no good to eat. Oh, when they be very young, they make a tasty pie. But these are birds I breed for beauty. Come see."
She leads me out through the dining room and along the hall to the last door, which is now on the right. It's the door from behind which the murmuring is coming. She says for me to get right beside her, ready to pop inside. She opens the door and there's a rush of wings. I start to back out, but her hand's on my back and her knee's on my rump, and she half-pushes, half boosts me into the bathroom, which is filled with maybe a hundred birds trying to get away from us. The little room is covered floor-to-ceiling with pigeon shit and is not a pretty sight.
"Hooo, hooo, hooooooo," she's hooing, settling the birds down. They perch here and there on a wooden clothes dryer she's got set up in the bathtub, on the top of the medicine cabinet, the towel rods, the curtain rods, and here and there. There is all kinds of pigeons: slick silver beauties that look like little black-eyed torpedoes with their wings folded; gorgeous white ones with feathers covering their feet; some that fan their tails out and strut up and down the windowsill.
"These are my pretties."
"Ruth, I think it's probably against the health laws for you to have these pigeons in the house."
