I directed the cab north. Rachel had invited me to stay at her place, but I knew the day would hit hard once she got inside. So I told her to sleep in and cal me tomorrow. I needed some sleep myself. And my dog could use some dinner. Or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, a nightcap seemed like it might make everything go down a whole lot easier.
I slipped in the door of the Hidden Shamrock at a little before nine, pushed past a knot of people, and headed to the back room. There was a scattering of patrons at some tables and four or five more lounging on soft couches arranged around a fireplace that looked like a living room. I skipped al of that and headed for the bar. If I’m going to drink, I want to sit on a straight-backed chair with a row of heads on either side. If I want to sit on a soft couch, I go home. That’s where soft couches belong.
A bartender I didn’t recognize floated over and skidded a beer mat my way. “What wil it be there, partner?”
He was an Irishman. That much I knew straight off. His hair was spiked blond with silver tips. He had a lightning bolt tattooed on his hand and danced a bit in his shoes as he stood.
“Give me a Booker’s neat,” I said.
“Booker’s neat, over.” He turned, grabbed a glass, and spun back to the bar. “So what’s shaking there, sir? Out for a little, you know?”
Large blue eyes rimmed in red rol ed to the left, toward a couple of women perched at the end of the bar.
“I know those two. Mama.” He gave out a hoo-haw like Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, dropped some whiskey into the glass, and pushed it my way. “If you want to be getting the ride, there’s the ticket, boyo.”
I took a sip and watched myself age in a bar mirror. The Irishman, apparently, required no response and kept talking.
“Name’s Des. The right honorable Desmond Walsh.”
I passed along my vitals.
“They’re al talking about that shit this afternoon,” Des said, lifting a foot and planting it alongside the speed rack.
“Lake Shore Drive?”
He nodded. “Couple of firemen came in. Told us it was an awful fucking wreck.”
I sat some more with my drink.
“Heard they kil ed the cunt,” Des said.
“Real y?”
“Coppers blew the fucker’s head off. Too good for him, you ask me.”
“How do you know they got him?”
Des nodded toward a bank of TVs showing the Bul s game. “Mayor’s gonna be on tonight. Give us the old play-by-play.”
“Thank God for Mayor Wilson, hey?”
“Thank God for them coppers. That boy was never gonna see the inside of a cel. Not in this town.”
A waitress beckoned and Des wiggled his way back down the bar. The Irishman was right. Chicago wanted some blood spil ed and they didn’t want to wait. Wilson understood that. So did Lawson. So did the media. They’d give people their dog-and-pony show and a head to stick on a pike. If I didn’t want to partake, that was fine. But the show would go on.
I took another sip of whiskey and again considered the merits of the bar mirror on the wal. On one side of it was a charcoal sketch of Brendan Behan and an il ustration of an Irish patriot I didn’t recognize getting his neck stretched by the British. On the other side was a Blues Brothers poster and what looked like an old railway schedule in a cheap brown frame.
“Des.”
The bartender was earnestly chatting up the waitress rather than pouring the drink she’d ordered. He grabbed the bottle of Booker’s on his way back and topped me off. It was the third drink I’d seen him give away in ten minutes and I wondered, not for the first time, how the Shamrock kept its doors open.
“That picture.” I nodded to the railway schedule. “Could I take a look?”
Des pul ed the thing off the wal. “Wabash Railway, 1923.” The Irishman looked up at me. “Don’t know a fucking thing about it.”
He laughed like a lunatic and made his way back to the waitress, giggling about the useless shit Yanks stick on wal s. I took a closer look at the old schedule. What had caught my eye was the logo: WABASH RAILWAY in Old English script over a yel ow background. Underneath it a black train belched smoke and steamed down a set of tracks. The design wasn’t identical to the cardboard cutout someone had left on my doorstep, but it wasn’t far off either. I flipped open my cel and punched in a number.
“Mr. Kel y, how are you?”
“Okay, Hubert. What’s up?”
“The news is saying someone shot up Lake Shore Drive today. Then you guys shot and kil ed him.”
“And you’re thinking our case is solved?”
“Is it?”
“Keep going. There’s at least two bad guys and only one of them is dead.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, how’s it going?”
“Slow. I got some data running on the current investigation. Checking everything against your personal history.”
“What about Jim Doherty’s files?”
“Just cracked them a few hours ago. Got some odds and ends popping up.”
“Like what?”
“Nothing special.”
“What do you have, Hubert?”
“Background stuff, mostly. Weird connections. For example, did you know there were two train crashes almost identical to yours? One in Des Moines in 1978. Another just outside St. Louis, three months before Chicago.”
“Commuter crashes?”
“No, these were freight trains. No one hurt, but similar sorts of accidents, one train hitting a second and then accelerating after the initial col ision.”
“That is pretty random.”
“There’s more. Both of the freight train crashes were investigated by the NTSB. They determined that an engine-override device made by an old company cal ed Transco malfunctioned, causing the first train to accelerate unexpectedly. In both cases the failure turned a minor incident into a major accident.”
“I stil don’t see much of a connection to Chicago.”