Identity- Lost Read online

“Whatever you can do I’d appreciate it, Jake.”

  “No, problem. I’ll be in touch. Oh, and Stan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Make sure you say hello to that wife of yours.”

  As he hung up the phone, one of Stan’s assistants came into his office and handed him the files on the two men arrested last night. Stan read their names, which were neatly typed on the tabs of the crisp, new manila folders: TURNER, P. and DESADIER, R.

  This can’t be right!

  Stan bolted from his chair, files still clutched in his hand, and headed for the hallway. As he ran past his secretary he shouted to her, “Yvonne, call me on my cell phone, but only if absolutely necessary!”

  When he reached the bank of elevators, he pressed the down button repeatedly as if the more times he pressed it the quicker it might come. While he waited, he frantically flipped through their folders, reading their rap sheets.

  What in the hell are these two doing down here?

  Once on the ground floor, he made a beeline for the Fourth Avenue Jail, two blocks away. When he arrived, the guard at the door recognized him and immediately buzzed him in.

  “Mornin’, Mister Kobe.”

  Stan didn’t reply. He made his way toward the intake holding cells in the basement of the building. Once there, he flashed his ID and shoved the two manila folders up against the gate, showing them to the guard and pointing to the names on the tabs.

  “Turner and DeSadier. Where are you holding them?”

  The guard behind the wire mesh squinted and cocked his head as he tried to focus on the folders pressed against the gate’s screen.

  “Those two? Holding Tank B.”

  Tank B? These two need to be in maximum security. The county sheriff’s people have no clue who they’re dealing with.

  “I need to see them now!” Stan shouted.

  The guard buzzed the gate’s lock. Stan threw it open. He scurried to reach the Holding B wing. When he got there a guard Stan had known for years lounged outside the cell. He greeted Stan.

  “Hey, Mister Kobe. You must be here to see those desperados Detective Hanley brought in last night. It was pretty late. But ol’ Jackson here is watchin’ ’em good now. Hey? You and Detective Hanley workin’ together again? If so, these two got no chance. No chance in hell is what they got o’ gettin’ outta here.”

  Stan acted as if he didn’t hear the old-timer while the guard continued his banter.

  “You sending these guys somewhere? I heard scuttlebutt they’re being moved,” the guard said, walking toward the gate.”

  To hell is where I’d send them if I could.

  Stan still offered no reply, waiting impatiently as the guard fumbled his ring of keys, looking for the correct one to open the next gate to the hallway that led to the Holding Tank B observation rooms. Stan felt the adrenaline rushing through his body as his heart pumped wildly. He was sweating profusely now and wiped his brow and upper lip with his handkerchief. He loosened his tie and opened the collar to his starched white shirt.

  “You okay, Mister Kobe, sir? You look like you seen a ghost.”

  “Jackson, please. Will you please just stop asking so many goddamn questions and open up this goddamn thing?”

  “Yessir, Mister Kobe,” the old guard said as he lowered his head. “Yessir. Sorry, sir. Jackson’s just makin’ small talk, that’s all, Mister Kobe, sir.”

  Once opened, Stan rushed past him and went down the hall-way to one of the observation rooms. The windows in the room were one-way, enabling him to see the prisoners without them seeing him. As he entered the darkened room, he tiptoed up to the glass. When he looked through it, he observed two men, each wearing the ubiquitous orange jumpsuits issued to those incarcerated in the Maricopa County jail. One of the men wore a patch over his eye.

  “I can’t believe this,” he mumbled to himself. “These two mother fuckers are still alive. They’re still fucking alive!”

  “Who’s still alive?” Brian Hanley flipped on the light switch for the bank of fluorescent lights recessed in the ceiling. Stan hadn’t noticed him sitting in the back of the dimly lit room.

  Startled, Stan turned to him and shouted, “Turn those lights off! And keep your voice down. I don’t want them to know we’re here.” He wondered why Brian was already in the room. He must have called me from here.

  “Stan? You okay? You’ve been in this Tank B observation room a hundred times. You know they can’t see or hear us. Do you know these two, pardner? You seen them before or something?”

  Stan paused, taking deep breaths, wiping his face again. Then he started cracking his knuckles and answered Brian without looking at him. “What? Know them? No. Of course not. How would I know them?”

  “Well, then, what is it? ’Cause you’re acting like a rookie prosecutor facing his first murder perp. I can feel your ass puckering from here.”

  “Sorry, Bri. I don’t know what got into me.” He stopped cracking his fingers and turned, looking directly at his buddy cop, then motioned back to the window. “I read their sheets. These fucks are worthless shits. I checked out your arrest like I promised with a friend over at the federal prosecutor’s office. From what he tells me, I don’t think the County Attorney’s Office can hold and charge these guys with anything that will stick. So Chicago PD can have them. As a matter of fact, I’ll phone the county attorney right now to get the extradition paperwork started right away.” Stan reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell.

  “Hold on there, pardner. What did you say? Extradition? You’re going to extradite them on some petty theft warrants back in Chicago? That’s not part of the plan. Were you not listening to what I told you earlier? We got these fuckers on tape conspiring to transport a truckload of meth, five hundred thousand in cash, human cargo, and guns across the border. What the hell you talking about extradition? What the fuck is going on here?”

  Stan put his cell on the table and took his handkerchief back out of his breast pocket. He wiped his face and neck and then folded it and put it in the back pocket of his pants. He resnapped his collar and straightened his tie. “Just what I said. I’m turning them over to Chicago PD. And if they don’t want them, then the feds can have the fuckers. Anyway, the feds have priority over this, so the county wouldn’t be part of it anyway. And even if we did, my plate’s full. I’ve got two cop murder trials pending and the Bee-line Highway serial killer case. I got no time for prosecuting antpiss gangbangers from Chicago.”

  As his own rage subsided, Stan could see Brian’s Irish temper boil as the detective picked up the two manila folders Stan had thrown on the table when he first entered the room.

  “What the hell’s going on with you, man? I don’t give a shit if the feds have supremacy here. The Stan Kobe I know would do whatever he could to get a chance to prosecute this case and throw the book at filth like this. For crissakes, they were planning on taking these drugs to Chicago and would probably end up selling the shit in school yards up there!”

  Stan turned his back on Brian and didn’t answer his accusations, remaining silent as his mind stayed focused on the prisoners—men he had believed he would never see again. He made a final adjustment to his tie in the window’s reflection, wheeled around and grabbed his cell phone off the table. Without looking up, he walked out of the room.

  Outside the building, Stan stopped and sat down on the nearest street bench, nearly collapsing. He once again loosened his tie and spread open the collar of his shirt. He struggled to breathe, chest tightening, trying not to look as desperate as he felt.

  This isn’t real. This isn’t happening.

  He fought to take deep breaths, wondering how he could keep his past hidden any longer after laying eyes on Pokie Turner and Bobby DeSadier. He cracked his knuckles nonstop. If he prosecuted these two, there’d be no way to keep his lost identity hidden any longer and he couldn’t allow that to happen. His life was unraveling right before him; his past had caught up with him at light speed.

  A
nearby construction crew was hammering structural steel pylons into the ground with a steam-powered pile driver, working to anchor the foundation of a new building’s parking structure. The deafening noise rattled inside Stan’s head with the repetitive bang-bang-bang of the incessant machine’s pounding.

  Wham! Wham! Wham!

  Please stop! Make them stop! Get me outta here! Make them stop!

  Maxine. The twins. How will I protect them?

  He pulled out his cell and dialed a number.

  “Jimmy? Yeah. It’s me. I need a big favor.”

  PART TWO

  MURDER IN MR. BURNHAM’S PARK

  CHAPTER 7

  FRIDAY, MAY 16, 1975

  2:30 P.M.

  No one enjoyed traveling to Chicago’s Burnham Park more than twelve-year-old James Overstreet. Located on the city’s near South Side just east of bustling Lake Shore Drive along the great lake called Michigan, he liked to go there everyday, either by foot or bicycle.

  On school days, especially spring ones like today, James would travel up and down the park well before the bell rang, a time he would most likely be alone, save for the occasional angler. He’d return after school for another visit, as this was his regular routine. With the weekend looming, the precocious boy would spend extra time exploring the park’s least used spaces. One of his favorite places was a desolate area where huge, pointed rocks jutted out all along the shoreline. Except on the calmest days, enormous waves from this majestic lake crashed against these limestone ram-parts that protected the park’s fragile shore from the relentless barrage.

  A bit of a daredevil, James liked to leap back and forth across these sharp, white boulders, playing his own treacherous version of hopscotch. One false move, or an overzealous slip, would send him tumbling into the lake’s unforgiving embrace. In testament to the danger, an unsuspecting lake admirer, venturing out too far on these lonesome jagged monoliths, would find himself swept into the water’s deadly cobalt depths by a merciless wave. Back in the 1930s WPA workers had removed most but not all of these tempting yet dangerous rocks, replacing them with smoother, friendlier versions in an effort to make the area safer. Workers sculpted massive stones and placed them in neat rows, creating huge steps that cascaded from the grass twenty or so feet above, to the shoreline below.

  Sometimes, as an adventurous change, an impulse took hold of James and he would tiptoe along the last row of these rock steps, the ever cold, uncaring, deep blue water only a few feet below him. One time, he ran as fast as he could along the edge of this bottom row, just out of reach of an immense wave that chased him, challenging the frothy opponent.

  “Crazy little nigger!” someone on the grass above shouted at him. The yell caught James by surprise as he played his one-sided game of tag. But James paid no attention to the unseen voice, knowing danger would not come to him if he kept his cool. Though often unpredictable, he had nothing but respect for the mighty power of this massive body of water.

  He felt no animosity toward the unknown voice’s derogatory shout. James Overstreet held no deep-seated anger most boys his age already exhibited, an outcome of being raised in broken homes. Boys starved for love and attention in a poverty-stricken environment. James was fortunate in that regard, though. Parents who cared for him, brothers and sisters who loved him, teachers who welcomed him into their classroom, and classmates who admired him, fostered his warm demeanor.

  He knew one of his greatest gifts, however, was living just a few short city blocks from the magnificent, indigo-colored lake and being so close to its expansive presence. Visiting her gave James the ultimate feeling of freedom, especially from the cramped basement apartment where he lived with his family near 39th and Ellis Avenue. Now a seventh grader, he attended the new Jackie Robinson Writing and Literature Academy, an experimental magnet school for gifted students, one of Chicago’s very first. His mother, a short but stoic woman, had stood in line for hours on a cold, damp March day when applications initially became available, assuring her bright baby boy was among the first to be enrolled.

  James Overstreet wasn’t like most boys from his neighborhood. For one, he never cursed—both his momma and daddy forbade it. The child loved learning new things and always participated in class discussions, rarely missing school. This was most unusual for a child his age. Boys from his neighborhood often dropped out of school by the time they were ten. But not James. He was a model student, a teacher’s dream. The boy showed promise.

  He did love to daydream, though. In school today, his teacher had demanded to know where the boy’s reverie had taken him.

  “Mister James Overstreet, what are you dreaming about now?” she asked.

  Intended to snap the miles-away James to attention, her shrill voice jarred the entire class from the final period geography lesson she was giving on Arizona and the Grand Canyon.

  “Nothin’, Miss Burns,” a sheepish James replied.

  “That’s noth-eeng, James. There is some-theeng at the end of noth-eeng, James, and it’s called a ‘g.’ Got that?”

  Miss Burns always emphasized her g’s each time she repeated this precise phonics lecture. She did it exactly the same way every time she dispersed it, which seemed much too often to him. However, it did amuse him the way her tongue darted out between her large, white teeth, surrounded by her dark, pinkish-brown lips, emphasizing the th sound before the eengs. A frog catching flies, he imagined. James pictured Miss Burns on a huge, green lily pad—her hair tightly pulled back, making her eyes bug out so she could see all around her—catching flies as they buzzed in front of her, like the toads that lived along the crags of the lakeshore rocks he jumped about every day.

  “Do you want your poor mother who worked so hard to get you into this school to think you’re not learning some-theeng in my classroom, young man?”

  James shook his head, keeping it low, hoping Miss Burns didn’t see him roll his eyes. The month of May had arrived and he and his best friend, Clayton Thomas, couldn’t wait for school to let out for the summer. It was the boys’ daily job now to use the long, wooden poles needed to open the tops of the classroom’s floor-to-ceiling, double-hung windows, facing the lake just a half mile away. Once opened, the smell of the nearby lake would waft through the huge openings: part air, part sky, and part fish. With spring now in full bloom, the scent of freshly mowed grass added to this sweet bouquet, teasing the children as the cool air washed across their bare arms, legs, and faces. No more boots, no more jackets, no more gloves and earmuffs were needed now. All these cumbersome items had been left at home, freeing the children to have their daily recess in the basking warmth of a Midwestern sun.

  The biology of spring in Chicago meant everything came alive again, including the schoolchildren, and all of them, even Miss Burns, could feel the electricity of the changing season in the air. As each day advanced and the memory of winter’s dreariness lapsed further and further behind them, Miss Burns would find it difficult to keep the children’s attention focused on their lessons.

  Like the burgeoning new season, James, too, had no control over his own metamorphosis. Every cell in his body screamed to be outside, to be in “that air,” as he liked to call it, to cruise the lake-shore paths of Burnham Park as its legendary namesake designer, Daniel Burnham, had intended. James could not concentrate on school no matter what point Miss Burns tried to make. Soon summer break would be here and he would no longer have to worry about Miss Burns catching him daydreaming and snapping him from imagined pleasures of travels up and down Lake Michigan.

  Crazed, he could barely contain himself as he watched the big hand on the classroom’s clock twitch closer and closer, minute-by-minute, toward the magic time of three o’clock: dismissal. He kept his eyes glued on the timepiece until the final bell rang, giving him his freedom. Then he’d bolt for the door.

  Today, James had ridden his bike to school and would use it on his after-school jaunt to Burnham Park. The bike, a black and silver Ted Williams model, had a decal of
the Sears brand prominently emblazoned on the front of the bike’s neck. These cherished wheels provided him with the means to cruise uninhibited along the park’s smooth, asphalt paths. Since most kids his age didn’t own a bike, the twenty-six incher—a birthday present from the previous year—had become one of his prized possessions. He never let it out of his sight, not even when he stopped for a quick sip at one of the park’s drinking fountains, or for an impromptu ride on one of the dozens of playground swings.

  Another bike James Overstreet greatly admired belonged to an old man who rode through the park on a candy-apple red, mint-condition, Huffy. James thought the man dressed funny, always wearing a blue, one-piece jumpsuit similar to what Evel Knievel wore in his death defying jumps on TV. The man also wore a rather odd, floppy gray cap. It looked to James like those he’d seen in photographs of old-time baseball players in sports books he borrowed from the Chicago Public Library.

  James had seen the old man many times before, but until today, he had never found the nerve to talk to him. The boy pulled up to a fountain where the man sat on his bike, one foot on the ground, the other propped on a bench next to the short granite water station. Gray hair stuck out from under his cap, which looked small on the man’s somewhat large head. James wasn’t sure if he should speak to the silver-haired gentleman, but his curiosity to know more about him and more about his cool bike with the built-in radio prompted the boy to finally talk to him.

  “You got one sweet ride there, mister,” James said, coming to a stop and then straddling his Ted Williams. He leaned over the waterspout for a drink.

  “Why thank you, young fella. She’s a beauty, all right. Bought her back in 1960.” The old man turned off the bike’s radio, which had blared an AM talk show. “Yours is a mighty fine bike, though, too.” He pointed to the decal on James’s bicycle. “Ted Williams was one of the greatest I ever saw.”

  Coming up from his drink, James gulped. “You seen Ted Williams play?”