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Everyone is someone’s son or daughter. Everyone. Some parents will go to any lengths to protect their children and their homes. Ask yourself: what would I do if my home was threatened and my children murdered?
September 2 nd , 12:30 am. Mick Thurston, security guard for Van der Veer, Inc. was worried that he might lose his job if yet another incident happened at the Bachelor’s Grove construction site. As he inspected the parked back-hoes, he should have been more worried about losing his life.
Perhaps he thought the sounds he heard behind the parked construction equipment were yet more neighborhood activists, adding nighttime vandalism to daytime protests. He went to confront them, a heavy Maglite in one hand, and the other hand on the revolver holstered at his belt. Whatever he saw in the flashlight’s beam caused him to freeze, to hesitate just a bit too long. Even as he started to draw the revolver from its holster, something tore his throat out.
My name is Carl Kolchak, and my business is crime reporting. Listening to the police scanner as I take care of other business around town (like the suit I’d just picked up from the cleaners) gets me most of my leads. Sometimes Tony assigns me some public interest thing to report on when crime is at a low ebb (rarely, except in the dead of winter). More often, that happens when there is more news to cover than there are reporters in the office. I hate being stuck with those kind of stories, where I’m expected to just regurgitate somebody’s press release.
The best stories, the ones that made my reputation, are hard-core investigative journalism into city corruption, the Chicago mob, and political scandals. They also make me a lot of enemies. Fortunately, the American mobs are well aware that rubbing out one annoying reporter just causes ten more reporters and the FBI to start digging to see what is so interesting that it rates a murder. That doesn’t mean my enemies make my life easy, especially when most of them belong to a mob called the Chicago Police Department.
And then there are the weird cases. The ones that have to be edited to almost nothing for Tony to send them out on the wire, or sold to the Midnight Star as is. The ones that put me in the hospital about half the time, and scare me half to death every time.
This time, the police scanner led me to the old, overgrown Bachelor’s Grove cemetery on Midlothian Avenue. A defaced sign proclaimed it to be the “Future Site of Bachelor’s Grove Condominiums”; sullen protesters waved signs as I drove up. I left my yellow Mustang convertible parked next a police car, slapped my straw hat onto my head, and hurried to catch up with the police at the crime scene.
“Reporter, INS,” I said, flashing my press badge at the first cop who tried to wave me away from the crime scene. Glancing around, I spotted the detective in charge. “Lt Bedderly! Long time no see! What happened here?”
The lieutenant, a tall man with dark hair, a thick, caterpillar-like mustache and a deep tan, gave me a malevolent glare. “Kolchak! Get lost. This is a crime scene, not a public spectacle!”
“And I’m a crime reporter,” I tossed back. “Freedom of the press, and public has a right to know what the city is doing with their tax money. City decided to save funds on your promotion to captain again?”
Bedderly gritted his teeth. “Get. Out. of. My. Sight.”
“Sure, no problem Capt—er, Lieutenant.” Bedderly let people push his buttons far too easily. I walked around the other side of the coroner’s vehicle, out of sight of the irritable police lieutenant, and almost collided with the coroner’s assistants loading a body into the hearse.
“So what happened?” I asked, flashing my press pass.
“Looks like a wild animal attack,” replied the middle-aged black man lifting the back end of the gurney.
“Yeah? That’s not something you see around here.” I put the right amount of curiosity in my voice. “How can you tell?”
The other assistant, a saturnine dark-haired man, replied for his partner. “Take a look,” he said as he tossed back the unzipped side of the body bag.
The victim was a middle-aged white man in a security guard’s uniform, or what was left of it. He had been disemboweled, his skull crushed, and his throat torn out. “Eww.”
The saturnine assistant chuckled. “You’ve got more guts than half the cops on this call. A bunch of them lost their lunches when they saw the vic.”
“Crime reporter. Not my first murder scene,” I replied. “Any idea of the time of death?”
“Middle of the night. Morning watchman found him when he arrived to take the next shift,” the black guy said, glaring at his partner. “He was still holding his flashlight and revolver when they found him.”
I made a few quick notes. “He’d drawn his gun?”
“Like I said, the revolver was in his hand. Not fired, though. Whatever killed him surprised him; looks like he didn’t really get a chance to use the revolver,” the black assistant replied.
I scratched my head, trying to figure out how to get the examiner’s report without bribing Gordie. “You know who’s doing the autopsy?”
The saturnine one snorted. “Probably O’Brien. Cullen’s out on vacation, and Lucardo’s still recovering from that broken leg.”
I smiled at the two coroner’s office assistants; contrary to rumor, it didn’t actually break my face. “You two have been very helpful, thank you.”
“Yeah, well, Bedderly doesn’t want you around, and he’s an asshole, so fuck him,” the other assistant replied. “I’m Zach, and this is Joe. Next time, at least bring some coffee—the dick in charge might not be a dick, if you get my drift.”
Thanks to my new friends in the coroner’s ranks, I knew who to bug for the autopsy reports—maybe I could avoid buying one of Gordie’s lottery tickets this time. Zach and Joe had also made it clear that the first time was a freebie, but after that they wanted some basic bribes. Par for the course in Chicago.
Bedderly’s ties to the Outfit should have guaranteed him an easy climb up the promotion ladder, but his complete lack of tact or subtlety stalled his career years ago. The Outfit was glad to have him carry their water for them, but neither they nor the CPD wanted him in any position of influence or public visibility. Anyone subordinate to him quickly learned to hate him—to my advantage, this time.
Unfortunately, Gordie the Ghoul still controlled the files at the city morgue, and I had to buy into his office pool to get a peek at the autopsy report. I’d never won his lottery; I doubt anyone ever did.
I looked at the report. “Gordie, does this medical-speak really say that stiff’s internal organs were eaten?”
Gordon Spangler, city morgue attendant, took the file from me and read it. “Yep! Not only were the organs not found on the scene, there were teeth and claw marks on the rib cage. Oh, and that’s not the even the best part!”
“So what’s the best part?” I handed over another five dollar bill. “Besides his brain being gone, I saw that part.”
“It was eaten, too. Or at least dug out of his smashed skull by something with claws. No, the best part was his legs!” Gordie replied, relishing the upcoming reveal far too much. He earned that nickname of his.
“His legs? I didn’t see them, they were in the body bag already. Let me guess, something ate them, too.” I didn’t release my hold on the five-dollar bill.
“Tooth marks, tore off all the muscle meat—and cracked open the thigh bones to eat all the marrow!” Gordie smirked gleefully as I finally released my grip on the bribe.
That ruled out werewolves; supernaturally-changed humans still didn’t have jaws that strong. I still had the number of one of the veterinarians at the Lincoln Park Zoo from the last time ‘wild animals’ came up in an investigation. Dr. Pryce was still willing to talk to me, albeit over lunch—provided I picked up the tab.
“Wild animal attack?” Dr Lucy Pryce raised an eyebrow. “What are they covering up this time?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” I replied between bites of my Philly steak and cheese sandwich. It wasn’t a four-star restaurant, but this particular hole-in-the-wall made damn good sandwiches. “See, the victim’s internal organs were all eaten, according to the autopsy report, and cause of death was his throat being torn out by the same size teeth that ate his organs. The thing that gets me is that the bones were cracked open by those same teeth—what can do that?”
Dr. Pryce blinked once. “A hyena. They don’t just crack bones open, they eat them.” She frowned at her sandwich and added more mustard. “I haven’t heard of any escapes from any of our local zoos, however.”
“Are zoos the only hyena owners? What about private exotic pet owners?” I asked.
“There aren’t any legal ones in Chicago. Illinois law doesn’t allow dangerous animals, which includes hyenas, to be kept as pets. As for illegal exotic pets, the ‘I am so badass’ types prefer tigers, wolves, and lions. Hyenas just don’t have that coolness factor,” she replied, and then ate half her sandwich in silence.
“But someone might have, and it might have escaped?” I pushed.
“Yes, but that’s quite a hypothetical.”
Dr. Pryce was right—without other evidence, I was just speculating. I stopped by the office to make a few phone calls—and caught a break when Uptight decided to complain about my story.
Ron Updike glanced at my desk as he walked back to his own desk from the water cooler. “Hey! That’s my story! Tony! Kolchak’s poaching my story!”
“I’m what?” I frowned over my coffee cup; the office coffee tasted reheated and lousy.
Updike sniffed. “I brought the Van der Veer Condominiums story to Tony in the first place, and he assigned me to work on it!”
“Wait, wait, wait, what story is this? I’m working on a murder story!” I waved my hands at my desk “Since when do you do street crime?”
“Murder?” Updike wrinkled his nose. “No, my story is about how Van der Veer pulled strings and bribed officials to be allowed to develop part of the Bachelor’s Grove cemetery. It’s an historic cemetery, and the Midlothian Historical Society has been fighting to get it designated as a national historic site and stop the construction. I’m writing a series of articles on it.”
“Is that what those protesters were about?” I asked.
Ron calmed down and straightened his tie. “Yes. Van der Veer has been using strong-arm tactics to try and stop the protesters, too—they’ve sent security guards to beat people up that were demonstrating legally on the sidewalk. One young man was killed, too, but the police mysteriously couldn’t find any witnesses.”
Ron peered at my desk. “He was one of the activists, and he was beaten to death, probably by Van der Veer thugs, not… eaten by a hyena? Ew.”
I leaned forward, resting my chin on my hands. “Ron—can I call you Ron? Tell me about your article series. I heard the words ‘bribery’ and ‘thugs’--maybe my murder story can tie in in a way that benefits us both.”
The first two articles of Updike’s series were already in print. The first had provided historical background on ‘the most haunted cemetery in Chicago’, though the fabled spooks hadn’t done a thing to slow down Van der Veer’s acquisition of the abandoned cemetery. The second article went into the commercial value of that many acres of undeveloped suburban land, and Van der Veer’s plans for condominiums and a shopping mall. Updike’s third article, which he graciously showed me before sending it out, described the questionable tactics Van der Veer had used to acquire the land and get the various permits and zoning changes required. If there was one thing Updike was good at, it was chasing the money—he covered not just high-society doings, but high-society financial shenanigans.
My thoughts went skittering in a dozen different directions; Updike had just handed me about that many leads. He’d also handed me a major new concern. “Updike, do you know who this Tony Appardo that owns a chunk of Van der Veer is?”
Updike gave me a nervous frown. “He’s a rather shadowy figure; he’s not part of any of the usual society organizations I cover.”
“Ron, you should peek at my desk more often. Appardo’s the puppet-master behind the Outfit. He and Paul Ricca used to run the whole thing behind the scenes, but Ricca died of old age just a couple years ago.” I looked at Updike; he suddenly looked a lot more worried. “Van der Veer, Inc, has got to be a mob front. Do yourself a favor: don’t cut through any dark alleys, and vary your route from your place to work. Don’t be an easy target.”
Updike was looking a little green around the gills, apparently unaware of the shark-infested waters he’d decided to take a journalistic dip into. “Okay,” he said.
I clapped him on the back. “You’ll be safer once the whole series is published. You’re at best a hearsay witness, and can’t testify to anything useful in court, so they won’t have any motive to shut you up after the fact. Try not to insult any of the people involved, stick to the facts, and they’ll forget about it.”
Updike tried to smile; it looked like his teeth hurt. “Okay.”
It’s a Chicago thing—the mobsters know that reporters are going to report, and they don’t expect us to keep our mouths shut about what we know, because we’re not part of their thing—la Cosa Nostra, the Outfit. We have no duty of silence to them, and they know it’s our job to find things out and publish them. Ron’s most damaging articles were going out today and tomorrow—and nothing was going to change. Daley’s machine controlled the polls, so no elected official was in danger of losing his seat for mere peculation. If no one had tried to kill Updike yet, they weren’t going to bother now.
September 3, 6:00 am : police responded to a vandalism complaint at the Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery. The Van der Veer construction crew had shown up to work only to find their heavy equipment thoroughly sabotaged, their power cables cut, and their portable generator stolen. It finally occurred to the site foreman that there was no sign of the overnight security guards; they had vanished without a trace—unless you believed the laborers who swore they saw hoof prints and bare footprints in the muddy ground just before the construction crew trampled all over it.
I arrived around 8:00 am, far too early to be drinking bad diner coffee. Peter daCosta, the foreman, was about as pleased to see me as I was to be knocking on the door of the site’s construction office trailer.
“I don’t have time for reporters! Do you know what kind of damage they did? We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions!” DaCosta threw down his hard-hat on a desk piled high with blueprints. “All because of those protesters and an incompetent security team that decided to goldbrick and not even stay the whole night! I told them, hire some off-duty police, they actually know what they’re doing, but no, someone’s brother-in-law owns a rent-a-cop company and we have to use them!”
I nodded along, trying to look sympathetic. “Oh, I understand. You’ve got the experience, you try to do your job the right way, and someone upstairs insists on micromanaging everything you do—and gets it wrong.”
DaCosta looked at me, and nodded. He was a burly, balding white man in his early forties, burned light red by the sun, but in good shape for his age. “Let me guess, your editor second-guesses you on how to write your stories?”
“All the time,” I lied. Tony Vincenzo, my editor, actually gives me a pretty free hand with my stories, except when they get too weird for him. What can I say? I give him the ‘who-what-where-when-how and why’, I don’t bury the lede, and I try to have actual evidence to verify my stories. It’s not my fault if the police destroy the evidence, and that Tony doesn’t like it when ‘who=200-year-old dead guy’, and ‘what=vampires’.
Sympathy established, I asked, “You think the protesters did this, and that the security guards just ran off?”
“Who else would have done it? They’ve been against progress here from the beginning. Buncha hippies and commies if you ask me. People like them have been caught spiking trees and wrecking logging equipment up in the northwest.” DaCosta picked up his hat again. “I think the security guards heard too much about the murder, and the cemetery being haunted, and chickened out. Half my laborers quit and ran less than an hour ago because someone thought he saw the devil’s hoof prints in the dirt.”
He sighed. “I don’t know what I’m going to tell the home office, but I’m going to have to tell them soon. We’re at a standstill right now—no equipment, no power, no workers. Someone fucked with us, hard… but they have no idea who they fucked with, I’ll bet.”
I left while daCosta was figuring out what to tell his shadowy bosses; I didn’t want him to remember that I was attached to the same press that was running those unfavorable articles about his construction job. I didn’t go far; first I took a quick, furtive photo of the daily roster, listing all the employees that were supposed to be there today, then I looked at the sabotaged heavy equipment. A mechanic was still assessing the damage; in exchange for a ten, he told me that the saboteurs knew their business—they poured sand in the crankcases, filled the oil tanks with dirt, smashed the fuel pumps, and removed the distributors. “And that’s just what I’ve found so far. These machines aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.”
The ground was too trampled by workers, police, and the mechanic to show anything interesting—until I looked around. Where would I stand if I were watching the construction site and getting ready to sneak in and wreck things? The missing security guards would have been watching the protesters until they left for the night, and monitoring the access lane vigilantly—or I hoped so, if they were at all competent. But had they been watching for anyone coming from deeper in the cemetery? I walked into the cemetery.
There was a knoll with a mausoleum that had a good view of the entire construction site. An old, crooked yew tree grew next to the crumbling mausoleum and in the shade of the yew tree, I noticed the ground was disturbed. I photographed what looked like footprints, detaching my flash and holding it at various angles to get some depth to the images. It was hard to make out details; I hoped that enlarging the photographs would help.
Just across the street was a ragged handful of protesters still holding signs; the group was much smaller than before. I walked over to talk with them. “Where is everyone?” I asked.
“You a cop?” An ill-favored girl who looked related to the coroner’s assistant—Zach—asked me.
I waved my press pass. “Intercity News Service. I’m a reporter; I covered yesterday’s murder and today’s vandalism. Someone sure doesn’t like this construction project!”
“You probably think we did it, huh? Just because we don’t think an historic graveyard should be paved over and turned into condominiums, that makes us murderers?” Two other people stepped up beside the girl—a black woman and a young white man. Neither of them looked friendly.
I raised my hands in a placating gesture. “Whoa, hold up! I didn’t say that. The guys across the street think that, though.”
“Oh, of course they do. Cops already arrested Andy and Bret on their say-so, and those two weren’t doing anything but standing around with us and waving signs. Same cops somehow couldn’t find any evidence when Matt was killed by those company thugs,” she said bitterly.
The black woman spoke up. “They sent a message, doin’ that. Seems to me that someone sent a reply, but it wasn’t us.”
“Speak for yourself,” the girl who first spoke up said. “Matt had kinfolk in that graveyard, which is why he felt so strong about it. Some of the things he said about his living kin… well, they weren’t nice folks. Might have been them who sent the reply.”
September 3, 11:24pm. Andrew Barret, arrested on suspicion of the Bachelor’s Grove vandalism, was found stabbed to death in his jail cell. Cook County Jail corrections officers witnessed nothing, and had no suspects.
September 4, 8:13 am. Some eight hours later, Bret O’Malley was released for lack of evidence—and promptly struck by a car as he left the lock-up. Death was instantaneous. The car was later found abandoned and torched in a back alley. A second message had been sent. It was not well received.
Updike’s third article in the series, profiling the Van der Veer corporation itself, was also published September 3. His fourth and last article, detailing the developer’s relationships with certain shady Chicago figures, was due to come out September 4th. Unbeknownst to Updike or myself, interested parties were reading the articles very closely.
Mailboy finally got my pictures developed at mid-morning, as I followed a hunch and found out what I could about the first murder in this growing gang war—one Matthew Upton, law student and member of the Midlothian Historical Society. Most of the Historical Society’s early motions against the acquisition of the Bachelor’s Grove cemetery and re-zoning for development were co-authored by him.
Back on August 30th, Matthew Upton, impoverished law student and part-time activist, chose to walk home from a late class instead of taking the bus. It was close to the end of the month, and his funds were running low. It was the wrong night, and the wrong neighborhood—he never made it back to his studio apartment. Beaten to death for the handful of change in his pockets, or so the Chicago police said. Chicago police couldn’t find sufficient evidence to charge anyone with the crime, and marked the case ‘unsolved’ and forwarded it to the ‘Cold Case’ file. Neighborhood opinion was that the Chicago PD didn’t look very hard.
I say ‘gang war’ in all seriousness; on one side, the Chicago Outfit, who began it by making an example of small fry daring to interfere in their business of making money. On the other side, a complete unknown—my only lead was the family resemblance I may have imagined. Judging from the photo in Matthew’s obituary, he was a relative of the girl I had talked to at the protest, and of Zach the coroner’s assistant.
Perhaps not the only lead. Mailboy finally delivered the prints to my desk—the photo of Van der Veer’s daily roster was clear enough that I could make out the names of the workers that had quit. The footprint impressions weren’t as helpful; someone had stood around barefoot that night. There was an odd half-print next to the barefoot watcher, like someone with really long, blunt nails had stood on the balls of their feet the whole time. I had no idea what to make of it, and set it aside.
“RON! CONGRATULATIONS!” Tony’s bellow startled me out of my thoughts. “All four dailies and two of the weeklies picked up your series!”
Updike looked pleased. “That’s great! I guess I can relax now,” he said, with a glance at me.
“Probably. Give the hotheads a few days to cool down,” I replied.
“Carl, what are you talking about? Shouldn’t you be reporting something?” Tony looked at me askance.
“Do you remember that murder I reported on two days ago? It’s tied into Van der Veer, and I’m trying to figure out how. There’s been three mob hits over that construction site, and I told Ron to be careful,” I told Tony.
“Mob hits?” That got Tony’s attention. “Carl, bring your files to me and show me what you’ve got so far.”
Tony was delighted by the prospect of my pieces linking organized crime more firmly with Van der Veer and the Bachelor’s Grove Condominiums scandal—organized crime articles always sold well. He agreed that Ron should continue to take precautions for his safety, and that my byline should be prominent on the organized crime pieces.
“Gee thanks, Tony. Nice to know I’m the expendable one around here,” I said.
Tony laughed. “Carl, you’ve got a lot more experience handling pissed-off mob goons and crooked cops than Ron does. You’ll be fine.”
While true, I did not feel reassured as I tracked down some of the workers that quit the Bachelor’s Grove construction job. That took many hours and two days of tedious legwork before I found anyone willing to talk to me. Meanwhile, the war continued to escalate.
September 5, 1:20am. Jerome Dillingsworth, founder of Dillingsworth Security, provider of security for Van der Veer construction sites, went downstairs to check on a noise his wife had heard. He never returned to the warmth of their marital bed.
6:01am. The night watchman at Dillingsworth Security’s main office found what was left of Jerome Dillingsworth propped up in his deluxe office chair. A hidden wall safe, previously unknown to Dillingsworth’s secretary and accountants, stood open and empty.
Gordie Spangler at the city morgue was happy to fill me in on the details of the murder—after I bought into his lottery to the tune of twenty dollars. “Just like the Bachelor’s Grove stiff, Kolchak. His internal organs were missing, with tooth marks all over the ribs.”
“Were the bones cracked open this time?” I asked.
“Nope; the skull was intact, too. Word is, the tooth marks match up though. So, what do you think?” Gordie asked.
“Wild animals don’t prop people up in chairs and empty safes, is what I think,” I replied.
“So maybe someone that keeps a hyena around to feed his victims to? Wow—do think we’ve got a psycho killer who likes to see his victims eaten alive?” Gordie had earned his nickname “the Ghoul” for more than its alliterative value.
I frowned. “Maybe. I have a hunch there’s more to it than that. Thanks, Gordie.” I left quickly. I had a hunch that Dillingsworth hadn’t been mangled as thoroughly as Thurston for the same reason he’d been left propped in his chair—the killers wanted him found, and recognized. The open safe was left that way for the same reason—the killers wanted the relevant parties to know that they had the “real” books for Dillingsworth Security, and that they knew Jerome Dillingsworth was a hollow shell, a puppet owned and operated by someone else. I wasn’t sure exactly who, but I did know that Dillingsworth Security was wholly mob-owned, and used when a legitimate front was needed for protecting Outfit properties.
The Outfit’s message had been received, and emphatically answered.
I finally hit pay dirt when I tracked down Henry Jimenez and Zahir Fayyad, former Van der Veer construction workers. Both had them had quit due to safety issues, according to the grievances they filed with IUOE Local 150 and Cement Masons Local 502, respectively. Tony was going to be less than enthused about my expense report for all the ‘tips’ I’d shelled out to get that information if they didn’t have something I could run with.
Henry and Zahir were drinking at the same bar, in between jobs. Said bar was a favorite hangout of construction workers, located near the Local 502 Union Hall. They were suspicious of me at first, but I bought them drinks, and explained that I was investigating their safety complaints and wanted to know what they’d seen.
At first, I only heard about the ‘legitimate’ complaints—lack of security allowing people to tamper with Henry’s front-end loader, bad soil for the foundations they were supposed to pour, and so on. Alcohol is a tried and true lubricant for the tongue, and after running up more expenses in beer, the conversation grew more interesting.
“Who has been tampering with your loader?” I pressed Henry on the point. “The protesters?”
“People who don’t want us there,” he said, for about the fortieth time. For the first time he added, “the ones from the cemetery. Los diablos. I saw them.” He blinked sleepily, well into his cups. “Had to go back late, left my niña’s present in the office. Saw them in the headlights when I rounded the bend in the drive. They were climbing on the pile-driver—their eyes glowed, like cats, and they walked on their toes, like pictures of those Greek diablos—satyrs. Only they didn’t have goat heads. Dog heads, wolf heads. I got out of there, came back in the morning early for la niña’s present. There were strange hoof prints all around the machines. I quit that morning. Nothing good comes out of digging up a graveyard.”
Zahir was quite close-mouthed at first, until Henry said his piece. He snorted, and drank more beer. “Not devils. Did I tell you I was born in Lebanon, and learned my trade there? Anyway, I emigrated to America when people stopped building highways and cities and started blowing each other up instead.”
“What do you mean, ‘not devils’?” I had a hunch I was about to get a lead.
“Lebanon is really old. You can’t dig a basement for a house without it becoming an archaeological site two feet down. Even out between cities, laying concrete for highways, there’s something. I’ve found old Roman swords, bronze spear-points, enough potsherds to pave Chicago… Anyway, sometimes the sites would get visitors at night. Two-legged ones that walked funny, with eyes that glowed in the lights like cats. They’d look us over, maybe raid the food rubbish, and leave.” Zahir put his beer down. “No harm, no foul.”
“Y’see, one thing we didn’t do, in those old places, was dig up burial grounds. Too many old ghosts. And other things. We left them alone, they left us alone. The Arabs—by which I mean the Moslems in our crews--they had a name for our visitors: ’eaters of the dead’. Al-ghaylan. Ghouls. Lots of folktales about them. According to those stories, they’re not devils—they respect the name of Allah—but they’re dangerous if provoked or hungry.”
Zahir leaned forward. “You want to know the real reason I quit? It was the tunnels. The first deep excavations we made, for the condo foundations—under the old burials, it’s just riddled with tunnels, all the way down to bedrock. Probably into the bedrock, given that it’s soft limestone here—perfect for caves. There’s no way that lousy, loamy clay can support those buildings, not with all those tunnels. Even worse if there’s caves in the limestone—that won’t support concrete pilings properly. DaCosta wouldn’t hear about it—claimed the soil surveys showed it was fine. Someone’s pulling a fast one on the investors, and pissing off the locals at the same time. It did not seem healthy to be caught in the middle of that, so I quit.”
Tony would not be enthused to hear about ghouls eating security guards; I needed better evidence than two drunken construction workers and a really poor photo of a possible hoof print. He would, however, be interested to know that Van der Veer’s construction foreman was covering up the complete unsuitability of the site for the proposed buildings. However, I needed evidence for that, too. The first place to go was to City Hall, where the building permits had been filed.
I was another twenty dollars poorer when I left, but had copies of the original filings and surveys. The next thing was to find a friendly civil engineer to interpret them. Thinking ahead, I went by the Cook County Extension office and got a copy of the USDA’s most recent soil survey for Cook County. A few phone calls later, and I had a consultation scheduled with Associate Professor of Civil Engineering Jason Berhart at the University of Illinois.
Before that, I had lunch across town at the University of Chicago’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. It wasn’t too hard to steer Judith Camden, Professor of Arabic Literature, into the topic of Arabic folklore and then to the monsters of Arabic folklore. I learned quite a bit about djinns and efreets before we got to talking about ghouls, including the surprising bit that most djinni acknowledge Allah and are considered Moslems. (That’s ‘God’ in Arabic, by the way, contrary to anything you may have read in a Chick tract).
“So, basically, ghouls are scavengers that hang around cemeteries and eat corpses?” I tried to summarize.
“Yes… but sometimes they’re more. It depends on the story,” Dr. Camden replied. “If it’s a cautionary tale about why you don’t rob graves, ghouls are the scavengers who will also eat intruders. Not,” she chuckled, “that such tales ever stopped generations of Egyptian tomb-robbers.”
I speared one of the shrimp in the shrimp cocktail with my fork, and twirled it in the sauce. “Maybe ancient Egyptian graves are so old there’s nothing left to interest ghouls.”
Dr. Camden laughed. She was a middle-aged woman with a full figure, the slightest touch of silver in her brown hair, and a hearty laugh. “I imagine mummies are too dried up for anything that eats meat.”
I ate the shrimp; it tasted strongly of iodine from being frozen too long before being thawed and served as “fresh”. If I ever get demoted to restaurant reviews, this particular cafe wasn’t going to appreciate it. “So, what if you’re telling one of the other types of stories about ghouls?”
She ate her shrimp cocktail with relish, either not noticing the after-taste, or used to it. “In quest stories, where a younger son is sent off to accomplish some impossible task, a ghoul might act as a wise and magical advisor. In such stories, the hero is usually told how to subdue a ghoul and obtain its goodwill, because normally a ghoul would probably kill and eat a desert traveler.”
“Wait, the hero can make an ally out of a ghoul? How does he do that?” The main dish, baked lake trout, was actually fresh and fairly tasty. Maybe I wouldn’t ruin their reputation in my hypothetical review after all.
Dr. Camden was apparently watching her weight, because she skipped the main course and tucked into an apple pie. “Some ghouls, like djinni, respected courtesy and honored hospitality. If you greet them politely--’As-salaam 'alykum’, which means ‘Peace be upon you’--before saying anything else, courtesy forbade them from eating you. Other ghouls could be converted to Islam by reciting the ‘Throne Verse’ of the Koran. Finally, I know of a few stories where the hero finds a female ghoul and tricks it into magically adopting him by, um…” Dr. Camden blushed slightly.
“By what?” The apple pie looked good; next time the waiter came by, I was going to order one.
She cleared her throat, and was definitely blushing. “By suckling from her breasts; having taken her milk, the hero was as one of her own children, and ghouls are very protective of their young. And very patient, too; if I remember that tale accurately, the hero was just a bit of an idiot, continually ignoring the advice his ghoul foster-mother gave him and getting in more and more trouble.”
I whistled. “I don’t think that story was in the version of A Thousand Nights and a Night that I read as a kid.”
“A great many of the tales aren’t in the sanitized excerpts for children,” Judith replied, still blushing. “This one is from a collection of Arabic folktales, not the Nights, which are Persian folktales.”
My interview with Associate Professor Berhart was less productive. He did say that the soil surveys presented with the building permit files for Bachelor’s Grove Condominiums were ‘not consistent with the USDA soil surveys’--and then promptly qualified his opinion by noting that soils can vary across small areas and that the USDA’s county-wide surveys might have missed a small pocket of firmer soil.
He agreed that if, hypothetically speaking, the Bachelor’s Grove cemetery. was undermined with ‘cavities’ in the soil and caves in the limestone, then of course it would be unsafe to build multi-story buildings there. The cost to sink pilings through fractured limestone all the way to firmer bedrock would be prohibitive, so no one would bother. But it was all hypothetical without proof that the soil was cavitated and the limestone fractured and eroded into caves.
“So you’re telling me, hypothetically speaking, that if Van der Veer falsified the soil survey for the site, and knew about the ‘soil cavitation’ and caves, then they are knowingly building an unsafe building that may collapse in the future?”
Berhart looked me in the eye. “There’s no ‘may’ about it. Hypothetically speaking, of course. The soil cavitation doesn’t matter as much as the fragile bedrock—concrete foundation pillars dug to bedrock will support the building if the bedrock is solid. But, if the bedrock is unstable, they would be lucky to get the any construction higher than two floors to stand in the first place—which is why this is all hypothetical speculation. No one would be that foolish.”
He pulled out a pipe and began to fill it. “If they were, there will be lawsuits aplenty, bankruptcy, and no hiding the soil conditions after the fact. The only way I can imagine this making sense is if the builders never intended to finish construction.”
“Take the investors’ money and run,” I said, fighting the urge to smack myself in the forehead. It should have been obvious, but the investors included major Chicago mob figures—people you don’t defraud if you plan to go on living on the same planet. “Thanks for the consult.”
I grabbed my hat and left. I knew you don’t rip off the likes of Tony Appardo and live, but maybe whoever came up with the Condo scam didn’t. Van der Veer was a New York firm, originally; there was a good chance the middle management was from New York as well, and didn’t know who the senior partners were in bed with.
I had two different angles to this story; first, the ghouls eating Van der Veer security guards and the protesters vandalizing VdV construction equipment. I suspected some overlap between the groups, improbable as it might seem. Second, the mob investment, and the possible attempt to defraud said investors. Either way, this story was one hot potato. I briefed Tony on both aspects.
“Carl!” Tony’s anguished bellow caused Updike to lift his head from whatever he was typing, cluck briefly, and go back to work. “Why do you do this to me?”
“You know why—both groups are a threat to innocent people in this city.” I snapped back, “Frankly, I’d rather have ghouls chewing on the occasional security guard than who knows how many hundreds of people killed when that shiny new condo collapses!”
“I have to admit, that aspect of the story grabs me. It dovetails beautifully with Ron’s series. There’s just one problem, Carl…” Tony built up to his usual riposte. “YOU NEED EVIDENCE!”
“Yeah, Tony, I’m working on that. I’ve laid the groundwork here, here and here,” I pointed at Ron’s articles in the Sunday pullout, the building permit filings, and my typed-up interview with Associate Professor Berhart. “I’ll have more evidence soon.”
Tony looked at me skeptically. “Don’t make me have to bail you out of jail. Please?”
“I’ll try not to end up in jail—or the hospital,” I added. “They’re not my favorite places to stay for the night.”
Part of my plan for staying out of jail, the hospital, or the morgue was to avoid flash photography while evading nervous security guards with itchy trigger fingers. My photography skills are normally adequate for what I do, but I’m far from an expert—so I spent some time and the price of a box of chocolate-covered donuts getting a lesson from Mailboy on night photography.
September 9th, 2:00am. My original plan was to get photographic evidence of the tunnels and possible caves beneath the Bachelor’s Grove construction site, and then interview DaCosta, the site foreman. I’d confront him with hard evidence of the cover-up, and see what he had to say. To that end, I was climbing the back fence into the site in the middle of the night.
At the street entrance to the site, a very bored representative of Chicago’s finest sat in his car—someone had pulled a few strings and gotten police security. I hoped he had a big thermos of hot coffee and plenty of donuts, because I didn’t plan to provide any excitement for him that night—but I suspected he’d be more likely to survive the night if he stayed wide awake and inside his car.
Whatever private security had replaced Dillingsworth’s men were staying close to the main building and its lights; given recent events, they were unlikely to investigate any noises short of an explosion out there in the dark. No one noticed me as I dropped down the other side of the fence; the burlap I’d wrapped around my camera tripod kept it from clattering against the chain-link fence.
With the aid of my penlight, I carefully found my way to the open pit that had been dug for the first of the footings. I then spent an anxious ten or fifteen minutes locating the nearest security guards and trying to figure out their routine, if they had one. It didn’t take long to notice that their attention was on the approach from the street, and the vehicle park, but not the pit—and that they were checking the parked construction vehicles in pairs, with guns drawn.
I found the ladder down into the pit and used it without alerting the guards. Down in the foundation pit, I could see where they’d thrown up temporary plywood retaining walls and marked off the locations of the first of the support pillars. They hadn’t yet dug down to bedrock, and I could see no sign of tunnels. They had probably been filled in, or hidden behind the plywood retaining walls.
As I walked across the dirt floor of the pit toward the nearest wall, the dirt crumbled beneath me and I fell. I landed a bit awkwardly, but managed to protect my camera and recorder as I fell. My knees and shoulder would feel the landing for several days afterwards, though. I was in a low dirt tunnel, one I would have to crawl through on my hands and knees.
I wasn’t alone. Rough hands with sharp nails grabbed me in the dark. “Peace be upon you,” I said quickly, nearly shouting in panic. “And you, too.” Just in case there were more than one.
There was a sharp intake of breath near my ear, a breath that smelled like rotting meat. “You have manners,” a hoarse voice replied. “Had you not greeted us right away, but started screaming rudely, we would have torn out your bowels and eaten them.”
Something glibbered behind me. It is hard to describe, but it didn’t sound like any language I had ever heard. “Um, I’d like to talk to whoever is in charge here about this unwanted construction project. Please?” It wasn’t hard to figure out that creatures that lived under graveyards and ate corpses would not be pleased to be displaced by high-rise condominiums.
More glibbering and other, high-pitched noises reminding me of the Saturday morning Roadrunner cartoons--’meep’ seemed a favorite exclamation. “May I turn on a small light, please? I can’t see in the dark.”
Silence fell. “No, not yet. You will come with us to speak to Mother. She will decide what to do with you.” I was pushed from behind as the ghoul in front of me tugged on my arm, so I crawled after them. Unfortunately, my tripod was too bulky to drag with me.
After a great deal of crawling in the dark, I was tugged and pushed into an open space. “You may make light now.” Several snickers ran through the darkness around me.
I turned on my little penlight, aiming it at the ground; accidentally shining it in someone’s eyes would be a bad idea right now. As I suspected, I was surrounded. They were humanoid, with dog-like heads and eyes that caught what little light there was and reflected it, like a cat’s. Some had human-like feet, with claws; others had less human-like feet, ending in multiple heavy nails—designed for digging, I suddenly realized. There was the source of the strange hoof-prints. They were all naked; about half were male and half female.
The circle of ghouls around me opened on one side to reveal a very large, very female ghoul reclining in a niche; long, pendulous breasts sagged down her chest, and she wore antique-style earrings dangling in multiple sets from each ear. An equally antique cameo locket dangled between her breasts.
I bowed as best I could, though I was terrified nearly out of my wits. “Peace be upon you and your family, ma’am.”
She chuckled. “Oh, I like this one! He is as polite as he is brave. Someone has told you the old tales, have they?”
“His heart hammers like a hunted hare,” interrupted one of the ghouls in the crowd. “He fears us.”
“And that is why I call him brave,” the ghoul matron rebuked the other ghoul. “He wisely fears us, yet still comes to us in spite of his fear.” Her gaze flicked back to me. “The old tales?”
“Well, when visiting people I’ve never met before, I like to find out something about them—at least basic manners, things not to mention in polite company, that sort of thing,” I said. “A nice lady at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies told me about ghouls, djinns, efreets and other folk.”
The ghoul matriarch cocked her head slightly and her jackal-like ears learned forward, all her attention on me. “Peace be upon you as well. Few people come to visit us willingly.” She chuckled again, a deep, throaty sound. “What brings you to me, hmm?”
“It’ll take me a bit of time to explain,” I said, “and feel free to interrupt me with questions if I’m not clear.” I wanted to make sure they understood me, and that I didn’t mistakenly give them permission to eat me, or the witness I would need.
“That is reasonable.” She gave a low, vibrating growl, and was answered by more of the glibbering and meeps, which I realized must be their language. Several ghouls scurried about, out of my tiny zone of light; a few minutes later, an old metal box was dragged over to me by one of the ghouls to serve as a seat. Another ghoul presented me with my hat, which I had lost in the initial scramble through the tunnel. A third presented my burlap-wrapped tripod to the matriach.
“Thank you,” I said to the ghoul who provided me a seat and the one who returned my hat. I brushed the dirt off and started to put it back on my head, and then thought better of it. It’s bad manners to wear a hat indoors, in the presence of an elderly lady, and there’s nothing like the fear that my internal organs were going to be served up at someone else’s picnic to encourage my best behavior.
“What is this?” the matriach asked, unwrapping the burlap from my tripod. “It seems a poor weapon.”
“That’s the tripod for my camera. I hoped to find caves in the limestone, and take pictures of them,” I replied. “Taking pictures in dim light requires a long exposure, and perfect steadiness. Thus, the tripod.”
Her amber eyes stared into mine. “That is why you are here, to see me, then? You seek safe passage? Why should I grant it to you? How did you know we were here?” she snarled, sitting upright.
“You or your family have been leaving half-eaten corpses about, and people have seen you,” I answered. “A person who knows enough of the old stories can figure it out… or someone who’s really nosy and asks the right people the right questions, like me. I’m a reporter, a crime reporter. I figure out what’s going on with crime and violence and report the stories to the public.”
“Here’s what I know,” I pointed a finger at the ghoul matriarch. “One, the management of a shady real estate developer convinced some of Chicago’s mob figures to invest in real estate development—specifically, Bachelor’s Grove condominiums and mall. Two, they used mob influence to rush through permit applications and the purchase of land that wasn’t ever supposed to be for sale. Three, because they pushed the project approval through by illicit means, they either didn’t know or didn’t care that Bachelor’s Grove cemetery is sitting on fractured limestone, and is unsuitable for building multi-story buildings. There’s a good chance that the buildings will collapse if ever built. Four, the neighbors don’t like the development destroying their historic cemetery. Five, you don’t like the development destroying your home. Six, the Van der Veer site foreman knows that this land is no good for his buildings, because he saw it and covered it up. Either he’s afraid for his job, or he’s afraid of the boss just above him, who is probably also covering it up. Seven, the mob bosses who invested in this development probably don’t know that Van der Veer employees are taking their money for a project that cannot succeed. Eight… you’ve started a gang war with the Chicago mob. Frankly, my sympathies are with you, but that cannot end well.”
Meeping and murmuring swirled around me. The matriach’s eyes narrowed and she wrinkled her nose. “They murdered my child! Shall they live when my child does not? We would have driven them out without casualties, but they murdered him.” She rose to her feet and grabbed me by the throat with one enormous hand, her teeth bared. “Now, what do you want?”
I pulled at her hand, gesturing that I could not speak while being strangled. She dropped me and leaned over me—I wasn’t sure if she was going to repeat her question or bite my face off. So I bit her first.
There are many experiences I don’t recommend, don’t care to repeat, and won’t describe. That was one of them. After everyone calmed down, and I was somehow still alive, I finally got a chance to explain my plan to Mother Ghoul. She listened carefully, and made a few suggestions to improve my plan. Unlike the third son of folklore, I heeded her advice.
The ghouls escorted me around the bigger tunnels and caves, showing me the eroded limestone and letting me feel the moisture still seeping through the caves. I took rock samples with their help, and many pictures. I didn’t look too hard at the few piles of gnawed bones scattered here and there, though I may have sneaked a few pictures with the Instamatic while my good camera was taking long-exposure pictures of fractured limestone.
It was sunrise by the time the ghouls escorted me out of an old mausoleum on the far side of the cemetery from the construction site, and left me to find my own way back to my car. I went home to throw up, gargle about pint of Listerine, shower with very hot water, and get a few hours sleep.
That evening, I followed Peter daCosta home from the site and confronted him in front of his house. It was a nice split-level in the suburbs, with a two-car garage and a fenced backyard.
“Mr daCosta!” I climbed out of my Mustang convertible and crossed the yard to where he was just getting out of his car.
“What?” He slammed his car door, unnecessarily hard I thought. “You’re that reporter—Kochin?”
“Kolchak, Carl Kolchak.” I flicked on my tape recorder. “I just thought of a few follow-up questions, it won’t take but a minute.”
“You had to follow me home for that?” He looked skeptical.
“You’ve got some pretty aggressive security at the construction site, Mr. daCosta. They aren’t letting reporters in.” I pretended to fumble with the folder in my hands. “So, question number one..”
I flipped the folder open and thrust the pictures of eroded limestone in his face. “Did you falsify the soil survey for Bachelor’s Grove, or did your boss do that? Because according to some very reputable civil engineers I talked to, this limestone will barely hold up a one-story house like yours—it won’t support a condominium without collapsing. Think very carefully about your answer—these aren’t the only copies, and people know where I am.”
DaCosta was torn between anger and fear, or so I gathered from the way he balled his hands into fists and tried looming threateningly. I’ve been loomed at by experts; the balding construction foreman wasn’t anywhere near their league. “You have no idea who you’re messing with,” he said through clenched teeth.
I stepped forward, right in his face. “Oh, I think I know exactly who I’m messing with. Do you? Do you have any idea what’s going to happen when your boss’s boss’s silent partners find out they’ve been defrauded? There’s not going to be any tidy little profit for those investors when the condo falls down and kills a bunch of people, and the inevitable investigation uncovers what a rotten piece of construction it was. Guess who’s going to be the fall guy? Not the investors, and not city politicos who took payoffs to look the other way. No, it’s going to be you, the construction foreman on the site, who should have known better, and who doesn’t have any friends in high-enough places.”
DaCosta paled, and glanced worriedly at his house. Fear was winning the contest. “I tried to warn them, but I was told that it would work out, I’d just have to patch the bedrock under the foundation pillars with some extra concrete, and that the Van der Veer engineers had approved the design. My boss told me that if I was too cautious to do the job, they’d find someone who could, and I got debts to pay and a kid in college.”
“So who overrode your judgement?” I was not impressed with his excuses; he had the power to shut down the site in the name of safety until a government inspector cleared it, and the union workers would back him and refuse to work if he was replaced by someone who ordered them to work on an unsafe construction site.
“My boss told me the order came from the VP of Commercial Development—Michael Van der Veer. He’s from the New York office.” DaCosta stepped back and raised his hands. “I had no choice; if I made too much of a fuss… you heard what happened to that protestor. I got a wife and kids.”
I stared at him. “Then now would be a good time to pack them up and take a vacation out of town. Far out of town. You’ll never get that condominium built; whoever murdered the protestors guaranteed that, and the situation is going to blow up in your face if you stay. I recommend talking to someone in the FBI organized crime taskforce when you’re ready to come home from your vacation.” I adjusted my hat on my head and left him standing in his driveway, gaping after me.
My next stop was Anthony “the Batter” Appardo’s mansion. Appardo kept a low profile, in spite of the Chicago Tribune’s reporting, having moved to a more secluded home after his original six-bedroom, 22-room mansion drew too much IRS attention. This one had multiple fences; I wasn’t sneaking in. Not because it was physically impossible, but because when dealing with a Chicago luminary like Appardo, it’s better to just knock at the front gate than to get shot by his guards.
I drove up to the front gate as the last of sunset twilight still glowed in the sky and told one of the two security guards that I was there for an interview with Mr. Appardo. He glowered at me.
“Ain’t no ‘interviews’ on my schedule,” he growled. “Get lost.”
“I have some really important information for Mr. Appardo,” I said. “I think he’ll want to hear it.”
The heavy-set man’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah? Like what?”
I showed him my press pass. “Carl Kolchak, Intercity News Service. I came across some really important information while investigating a story that I can’t publish, and Mr. Appardo will want to know about it. Someone who doesn’t know how this city works is trying to cheat him.”
The thug grabbed my ID, squinted at it, then threw it back in my lap. “Park over there.” After I parked and returned to the gate, he shoved me against a wall and patted me down, while his silent partner watched me for any suspicious moves. He even checked inside my hat for things in the hat band.
“I’m unarmed,” I said. “I’m not stupid.”
“Yeah? What’s in here?” He kicked my camera bag.
“That’s my camera bag. It’s got a camera, my tape recorder, and a folder of evidence for Mr. Appardo,” I said truthfully. “Take a look if you don’t believe me.”
Bodyguards for high-ranking Chicago mobsters don’t believe random strangers who walk up to them, so of course he searched my bag. Surprisingly, he wasn’t too rough with my belongings, and didn’t break anything—I might be telling the truth. He scowled at the contents of the manilla folders stashed in the camera bags.
“What kinda joke is this? These are pictures of caves!” He frowned even more deeply.
“That’s part of my evidence—there aren’t supposed to be caves there, and the fact that there are is going to make Mr. Appardo very unhappy with someone. With all due respect, I’ll explain everything to Mr. Appardo.” I took my hat back from him, straightened it out and put it back on my head.
“Frank, cover the gate,” he told the other guard. “I’m escorting Mr. Kolchak up to the house.” To me he said, “You better not be joking. Mr. Appardo don’t like jokers.”
“I am dead serious,” I said. My escort kept my camera bag, still not trusting me.
Once in the house, I was escorted to a very nice home office, suitable for a high-powered lawyer who brings work home for the weekend. Tony Appardo sat in a high-backed, black leather chair; he was an old, clean-shaven Italian man with a big nose and tired eyes. He did not, however, look like anyone’s doting grandfather, even though he was one—and he wasn’t smiling. I knew that if I didn’t sell my case, they’d never find my body.
“Mr. Kolchak,” he said. “Leo tells me that you have ‘important information’ for me—that someone is cheating me.” He looked concerned.
“It’s about the Bachelor’s Grove Condominiums project that Van der Veer is trying to build,” I said. “Someone in Van der Veer is lying to you, sir. The bedrock underneath the site won’t support multi-story buildings.”
“That’s a pretty serious accusation,” the old man said, still expressionless. “Back it up.”
I smiled at my escort, Leo. “Mr., ah, Leo, is it? May I get the folders out of my camera bag?”
Leo scowled and opened the camera bag, handing me my manilla folders. “I checked his bag, sir. Nothing that shouldn’t be there, as far as I can tell.”
Appardo smiled faintly then. “Leo is cautious about my health.”
“I understand,” I said. Twenty minutes in, and nobody had punched me in the gut yet, which was a personal record for dealing with mobsters. “Here’s a copy of the soil survey Van der Veer filed with the city, attesting that the ground was suitable for the sort of foundations they planned to build.” I carefully handed Mr. Appardo the relevant legal document.
“This is the USDA’s soil survey from a few years ago. The sub-section I have bookmarked is the same plot as the Van der Veer construction site. You’ll notice that they are not in agreement. And that’s not all,” I hurriedly added. I handed him another document.
Tony Appardo studied the two documents for several long minutes, and glanced at me. “And?”
“I heard from some of the workers that they found caves and fissured limestone bedrock when they dug the foundations. I was curious, and didn’t think that sounded right for such a substantial building, so I consulted with a reputable civil engineer. Here’s a transcription of his opinion on what happens if you build a multi-story building on eroded limestone riddled with caves.” I handed Mr. Appardo the transcription of my interview with Associate Professor Berhart. “I knew that wouldn’t be enough evidence to convince my editor, let alone you, Mr. Appardo, so I investigated the site myself, and took pictures in the caves.” I presented the good pictures, the ones that showed the fissures in the limestone and the water-eroded caves, without showing the ghouls or the piles of body parts and broken coffins. “I can show an expert of your choice where I took these pictures; they are underneath the site.”
Appardo was frowning by this point; he put down the pictures. “What’s your angle, Mr. Kolchak? You came to me without breaking this story. Why?”
I took a deep breath. “I’m trying to stop a gang war before too many people get killed because some middle manager at Van der Veer was a greedy idiot and lied to you. The student, Matthew Upton, that someone killed—and I don’t know who was responsible—had family. That family is vindictive, and goes way back in the Old World and believes in blood feud.”
“Are you threatening me?” Tony Appardo said, with the voice of a man who had personally murdered over a dozen people without ever doing a day in jail.
I held up my hands and backed up a step. “Oh no, I wouldn’t dream of that! As far as I know, Upton’s family only cares about the people that personally carried out the murder.”
“And you know who they are,” Appardo said. Oops. I had made a mistake, a mistake that could well get me tortured to death.
“I do, and I wish I didn’t! Mr. Appardo, do you know the stories from the Old Country?” I hurriedly asked. It was dark outside now, full night. “Upton protested the construction site because his family dwells there… and they don’t need an invitation to enter a house.”
I heard the click of hooves on the flagstone patio outside. Leo did, too, and drew a pistol from the shoulder-holster under his suit jacket. I raced through my spiel. “No more innocents need to get hurt, Mr. Appardo. Michael Van der Veer told Peter daCosta, the site foreman, to shut up and forget what he found out about the bedrock, and implied that something bad might happen to his wife and kids if he made the information public. He knows the bedrock won’t support the buildings—those buildings will either never be built, or fall down after construction, killing and injuring who knows how many. You’ll never get back your investment, because he’s defrauding you.”
“That’s one,” Tony ‘the Batter’ Appardo said, coming around the desk. “Now, you can tell me where to find Upton’s ‘family’, or you can keep talking about ghost stories--”
“Mr. Appardo,” Leo said worriedly. “I can’t see Joey or Fred, and the floodlights are out.”
“Look, I didn’t want it to get this far,” I said—and the old man punched me in the gut. I hate dealing with mobsters.
“No? Then you’re stupid,” Appardo said as I doubled over.
“Las Vegas. Call Chief Ed Masterson, ask for the real story on Janos Skorzeny, not the cover story. Get him to tell you who really brought down that serial killer, and what he was,” I said frantically, as I straighted up, holding my stomach. For an old mobster, Appardo packed a mean punch. I knew Masterson was crookeder than a sidewinder rattlesnake, and the Vegas mob answered to the Chicago Outfit.
“I’ll make the call,” Appardo finally said, his dark eyes regarding me as if I were a tiresome problem to be disposed of. “You’ve bought yourself that much time. Leo, take this idiot to Clarice’s greenhouse and wait. I don’t want blood on my floor.”
I kept my hands in plain sight while Leo herded me into the greenhouse. Leo still wasn’t sure which way things would break, and neither was I. Dealing with Mother Ghoul had actually been less nerve-wracking than this. The shadows falling on the greenhouse didn’t help either of our nerves any; I was careful to not make any sudden moves. The air in the greenhouse smelled of freshly-turned earth and rotting flesh.
“Leo,” I said. “Don’t make any sudden moves. They’re as nervous as you are.”
Leo looked around at the deep shadows that seemed to flit and skulk. “Anybody comes after me, I’m shooting Kolchak first,” he announced. There was a sudden tension in the air, like multiple unseen someones had drawn breath at once, and held it.
“Oh that was a brilliant idea,” I said. “Threaten them with the one thing they’re here to prevent. I’m sure everyone will just calm down and relax. Right, Leo?”
Leo glared at me, the one target he could see clearly. “What did you do with Frank, Joey and Fred? If anything’s happened to them, it’s coming out of your hide.”
“I didn’t do anything to them. Upton’s family is just holding on to them for now, safe and sound, so nobody gets too trigger-happy,” I said. I checked my watch. “I hope this doesn’t take too long; they might get hungry.”
“What the hell is out there, Kolchak?” Leo said; his gun hand trembled for a moment.
“People—more or less—who don’t like having their homes dug up to be replaced by condo foundations,” I answered.
Leo didn’t reply, but just sat there grimly watching me. It was over an hour before Tony Appardo appeared in the greenhouse door. He was quite a bit paler than he had been an hour ago.
“You said they can enter a house without invitation,” Appardo said abruptly. “Not vampires, then. But maybe I should pay attention to the old ghost stories. Leo, bring Mr. Kolchak back to my office.”
Tony Appardo was just a bit shocked to find Mother Ghoul crouched behind his desk when we returned there. I have to give the old mobster credit where credit was due—he recovered quickly. I don’t know if he knew ‘the old stories’, or if the wily old mobster decided that good manners were best to greet a large monster camped in your office. It could have been either one—Appardo had not successfully run the Chicago mob since the end of WWII by being a fool.
“Buonasera, madam.” He bowed. “I am Anthony Appardo. Are you here to eat me, or negotiate?”
Mother Ghoul cocked her head. “Had you not greeted me politely, I would have eaten you. I will instead negotiate.” She turned to look at me. “Kolchak, my child, go. You have done your part well—you do not need to hear things that would burden you, and might make Anthony Appardo think he needs to eliminate you to shut you up.”
Appardo marked her words with a raised eyebrow in my direction. “I concur. Kolchak, go, and don’t bother me again. Leo, see Kolchak out.”
Leo, who was dead white but had remained remarkably steady, all things considered, said “You heard the boss!” and pushed me in the direction of the door. He then muttered something about ‘stregone’ as he escorted me back to my car. I later found out from Vincenzo that it meant ‘warlock’. I’ve been called worse.
Late in the morning of September 10th, I finally woke up. Last night had been long, terrifying, and exhausting, and then I had gone by the office to type everything up before going home and collapsing. Tony Vincenzo was happy to see me.
“Nice of you to show up, Carl! I’m always happy when you deign to grace your place of employment with your presence.” My editor looked dapper as always—he’d had a good night’s sleep.
Someone had made a fresh pot of coffee, and I took advantage of the opportunity to fill my mug. “I was up late typing up my story.” I dug the manuscript out of my locked desk drawer. “In your office?”
Tony sighed. “It’s one of those stories, isn’t it?”
I tried to look inscrutable. Tony sighed again, and opened the door to his office. “Come in.”
After I closed the office door behind me, I said, “I have two stories. Here’s the real story,” I handed him one stack of paper held together with a binder clip, “and here’s the one that’s publishable.” I handed him another stack of paper.
Tony blinked. “Why thanks, Carl! You could just have given me the second stack.”
“I figure you, of all people, should know what I’ve really been doing.” I rubbed my eyes; it would be nice to get a full night’s sleep, starting at normal hours for once. “This time, I actually had enough story for an article without the extra special stuff. Ties in with Ron’s series, too.”
Tony grinned. “I’m dreaming, right? Christmas came early?”
I shook my head. “No, it was a late Mother’s Day.”
September 10 th , 12 noon. Tony Appardo’s lawyers withdrew from the Van der Veer, Inc. investment, citing ‘fraudulent inducement’. No mob money was lost.
September 10 th , 6:00 pm. My article on the Van der Veer’s fraud in the development of Bachelor Grove Condominiums is published in the evening editions. Van der Veer’s remaining investors withdraw, also citing ‘fraudulent inducement’.
September 11 th , 7:39am. Michael Van der Veer was an early riser, and favored a continental breakfast of a fresh danish and coffee from Sather’s. Instead of a danish, he received a sawed-off shotgun blast to the face from an unidentified gunman who fled the scene.
September 12 th , 3:00 pm. Van der Veer, Inc. announces cancellation of the Bachelor’s Grove project. Three months later, the company files for bankruptcy; the Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery land is bought by Cook County and added to the Forest Preserve lands.
I don’t know what terms Tony Appardo negotiated with Mother Ghoul, but I do know that after that date, no bodies of those disposed of by the Chicago Outfit were ever found. They had the perfect body disposal service until Tony Appardo died of old age. I sometimes feel guilty about having enabled that, but I drive by Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery now and then, and think of all the innocent people who didn’t die because we stopped the project and the gang war.
I don’t think I’ll be taking my adoptive mother’s mincemeat pie to the office’s Thanksgiving pot luck dinner, though.
~~ The END ~~