Identity- Lost Page 8

  “So, you must be Pick,” Manny said to the tall boy without the bat. “I was wondering when I’d get the chance to meet you in person.”

  “The one and only,” replied Pick.

  Without warning, Pick threw a punch at the old man, but Manny, still strong for his age, stopped the boy’s scrawny hand midstrike. He held it and then twisted Pick’s fist, tossing him back like a rag doll. The other gang members roared with laughter.

  Glaring at his mates, Pick snatched the baseball bat from his taller sidekick’s shoulder. He turned the piece of wood in his hands, standing sideways, cockily emulating the motions of a big league ballplayer. Without the briefest hesitation between respective movements, he swung at the old man. Manny raised his arm to block the blow, but the brute force shattered his forearm. The impetus of Pick’s vicious blast threw Manny from the Huffy, screaming in pain.

  Mind spinning from the pain of the bat’s crushing blow and the adrenaline now pumping through his body, Manny experienced the next moments as if in a dream. One boy grabbed the sparkling red prize and attempted to jump on it as two of the other boys fought the first for rights to it. The fourth boy ran off, terror on his face. Pick and his sidekick laughed as they watched the three remaining Oakwood Rangers foot soldiers battle for possession of the bicycle booty.

  Manny lay prone, face turned sideways, moaning, unable to move. Pick taunted the old man as he stepped closer, balancing the bat on his bony shoulder. He shouted down at Manny. “You shoulda kept your white-haired Jew ass out of my park!”

  Then, like Lazarus rising from the dead, Manny seized Pick’s leg with his good arm, clenching his attacker with a grip just above the ankle. Startled, Pick struggled to free himself from the old man’s strong hold. The gang’s leader panicked. The boy with the patch over his eye rode Manny’s Huffy in rings around the fracas, closing in around the pair of combatants. Another boy sat on the handlebars while the third stood on the axle of the rear tire. They whooped and hollered, taunting their leader as they watched his futile effort to break free from Manny’s grasp.

  “That fool’s got your silly ass, man!” cried one boy.

  Another shouted, “Stomp his head, man! Stomp him!”

  “That fuckin’ ol’ man whoopin’ your ass, Pick!” yelled the boy with the patch.

  Unable to pull himself away from Manny’s vice-like clamp, Pick spun, pivoting, as he supported himself with the bat. But he still could not break loose. Scowling, he raised the bat over his head and swung it downward full force, striking the old man square on the back of his head.

  The Huffy’s driver slammed on the bike’s brakes, tumbling the other two boys from the bike. Dumbstruck, the trio stared as Pick began a vicious thirty-second pounding of the prone Manny. Then, as abruptly as he began, Pick, blood splatters covering his entire body, halted his bat barrage and stared down at his victim. Dazed, his eyes were as glassy and dark as the shimmering, sapphire lake behind him.

  The old man, lying in a pool of his own sticky, gray-colored brain matter, managed to somehow open his eyes. He struggled to focus his vision through blood, though it skewed his sight. He reached a limp arm out, pointing. Pick, watching his victim’s every move, looked in the direction of Manny’s outstretched limb. The leader’s eyes widened. He pointed with the Louisville toward a park bench off the path about fifty yards away. The gang turned their eyes to where Pick raised the bloodstained weapon.

  “Hey, do you see who I see?” shouted the boy with the patch. “That’s our little nigger squealer! Let’s go get him!”

  “No,” Pick snarled, freezing the group. “We’ll deal with his sorry ass later. Right now, everyone book it. Then meet at ten back in the bone yard tonight.”

  Following their still-crazed leader’s directions, the members of the gang dashed north while blood from Manny Fleischman’s wound continued to flow, oozing into the crevices of the park’s black asphalt path. Then Pick raised the bat, turned his head toward the park bench where the boy crouched, and slammed the bat down on the head of his prone victim one more time.

  CHAPTER 10

  10:34 A.M.

  Earl Overstreet sat at his kitchen table in the family’s basement apartment on Ellis Avenue as he did every morning, reading the newspaper. In a couple of hours, he’d be leaving for his afternoon shift as a security guard at Goldblatt’s Department Store. His wife, Eva, busied herself collecting the family’s dirty laundry, preparing for her weekly trip down to the turn-of-the-century building’s dingy cellar. When their son James came running through the apartment’s back door, the boy’s feet barely hit the floor. He ran nonstop through the family’s stark kitchen and straight into his room.

  “James Overstreet! Don’t you be runnin’ through this here house with your shoes on!”

  James never looked back to reply to his mother’s demand. As the door to his room slammed shut behind him, she looked up from her laundry basket and turned to Earl.

  “Earl, I told that boy a thousand times to take those shoes of his off before he comes runnin’ through my house. Maybe you can get through to him ’cause I sure don’t seem to be able to lately. He’s been actin’ awfully strange this past week. Go see what’s wrong with that son of yours.”

  Earl had already thrown his paper down as soon as his son streaked by him. He went to the door of the boy’s room. His wife had been correct in her observation. James hadn’t seemed his usual talkative self, keeping himself locked up in his room for nearly a week, only coming out to eat or go to work.

  “James, boy. Get out here,” Earl said through the door. “What the heck is going on with you, son?”

  No sound came from behind the closed door. Earl inched a little closer and spoke through the thick, wooden door. “James?”

  Again, no response.

  “Boy, your daddy’s asking you to come out here before I come in there.” Earl waited. “Son? Do you hear me?”

  No sound.

  “James!”

  His father turned the old brass handle slowly, opening the squeaking door. He peeked in through the small crack he created, large enough for Earl to see his son’s tear-filled eyes.

  “What is it, boy? What’s goin’ on? You in some kinda trouble?”

  As James stood there, hanging his head, shaking it back and forth, Earl gently pushed the door open wider. Whimpering, the boy said, “They killed the ol’ Jew-man, Daddy. They killed him.”

  Eva’s clothes basket thumped to the kitchen floor. She rushed over to the doorway. “Who killed what?” she asked, pushing her husband aside.

  “The ol’ Jew-man, Momma. The man I work with in the grocery store. Mister Fleischman. They killed him. They took his bike and then they beat him with a bat.”

  “Oh my Lord,” Eva gasped, pulling James close to her in a protective embrace. “Not Mister Fleischman!” she wailed.

  James struggled to nod, his head buried in his mother’s chest.

  “Dear God,” Earl murmured. “Who did this?”

  “Ice Pick and his gang—the Oakwood Rangers. They took his Huffy bike in the park, right where he always rides, and then they beat him. They said they was gonna beat him and they did,” James said, looking up, sounding as if he was about to cry.

  “Whatchew mean ‘they said they’s gonna beat him’?” Earl asked, raising his eyebrows toward the top of a furrowed brow.

  “Earl? Please?” she said, clutching James even closer. “Ease up on the child.”

  “All right. Okay. Everybody just calm down. Now, come over here with me, boy, and explain to me what happened,” said his father as he returned to the kitchen table, sitting back down.

  Still under the protection of his mother’s shielding clench, James followed her as she sat across the table from her husband. James’s sisters and brothers had gathered in the kitchen now, too. Everyone remained silent as James described what he had just seen: how the gang had stopped Manny Fleischman, taken the man’s bike, and then how Pick had beaten the old man repeatedly with
a baseball bat while the other boys in the gang stood by and watched. When he finished with his tale of what had happened, no one said a word.

  Earl broke the eerie silence. “Did you help the man, boy? Did you call an ambulance?”

  For the first time since he started telling the sordid tale, James began to weep openly. “I ran, Daddy.”

  “Ran? That man’s your friend. You work with him.”

  “All I could think of was gettin’ out of there as fast as I could,” James said through his tears.

  “That means that poor man’s still lyin’ out there. Probably bleeding to death!” Eva declared, squeezing James.

  James’s two sisters started to cry. One brother groaned.

  “Well, then, we gotta tell the police, boy. That’s all there’s to it,” Earl said.

  “Over my dead body!” Eva shouted, standing up. She grabbed James and pulled him away from the table.

  “Whachew talkin’ about, Eva? This boy’s been a witness to a crime, possibly a murder.”

  Eva stood firm. “He ain’t tellin’ no police. He ain’t tellin’ no one. Those boys’ll kill him if he does.”

  “Did those boys see you, son?” Earl asked him.

  James answered with a short nod.

  “Oh my Lord,” Eva whispered.

  “If that’s the case then he has to go to the police ’cause they might kill ’im even if he don’t,” Earl added. “Those boys know he saw them. He ain’t got no other choice.”

  “But Momma’s right, Daddy,” James’s other brother said. “If James flips those boys, they’ll be after him for sure.”

  “There’s no place he’ll be safe,” the other brother said. “I know those boys, Daddy. They’s badass dudes.”

  “Now you watch your language. You hear, boy?” Earl stood up from the table and looked at all of them. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing from my own family. What about Mister Fleischman? What about his family? If James don’t go to the law then he’s no better than those boys who beat that poor old man. James gotta tell the police. They’ll help him. Protect him.”

  “Don’t try to sell me on the police helpin’ or protectin’ black folks, Earl Overstreet,” Eva persisted. “Just like they helped my poor brother down in Little Rock, I suppose? They ended up killin’ my baby brother. That’s what the police did. Killed him.”

  The argument continued for several more minutes as to whether James should go to the police station or not. After much discussion, Earl made a final statement. “Let’s just all calm down now. I’ll find out exactly what’s happened to Mister Fleischman and then I’ll make a decision for this family of mine.”

  There were two local hospitals in Bronzeville and Earl had hoped by calling them he’d be able to find out if Manny Fleischman had received help and been taken to one of their emergency rooms. First, he called Michael Reese Hospital, but the staff refused to provide him with any information over the phone. Undaunted, he dialed Bronzeville’s other local hospital.

  “Mercy Hospital.”

  “Yes, ma’am, my name is Earl Overstreet. I live over on Thirty-ninth and Ellis. I’m tryin’ to find out if an old man was brought in to your emergency room today?”

  “Hold, please. I’ll connect.”

  “ER nurse’s station. Nurse Piper.”

  “Yes, Miss Piper. Could you tell me, ma’am, if an old man was brought in there recently to your emergency room—an old man who might have had his head badly beaten?”

  “May I ask whom I’m speaking with, sir? Are you family?”

  “No, ma’am, I’m not, but my boy knows him, works with him.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. But I can’t release any information like that over the phone. Confidentiality and all.”

  “Please, miss. We gotta know. My boy—I think my boy seen this man get attacked.”

  “Then let me get your name and number and I’ll have the police call you, sir.”

  “Police? So, he is there?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I really can’t say. Please give me your contact information and I’ll have someone call you.”

  Earl dropped the receiver from his ear and placed the handset back in the phone’s cradle. Avoiding the family’s puzzled looks, he mumbled, “I gotta go to work now ’cause I’m gonna be late.” He turned to his wife, still seated at the table, holding James to her side. “We’re gonna have to wait until I can find out exactly what happened.” He tapped his index finger several times hard on the kitchen table and continued. “James, stay right inside this house until I come home, you hear? Matter of fact, I don’t want anyone leaving the house till I come home from work. Ya’ll understand? That’s—”

  Earl’s words were interrupted by the telephone’s ring. He picked up the phone.

  “Hello? Oh, hi Clayton. Yes. Hold on. I’ll get him.” Earl turned to his son, covering the receiver with the palm of his hand. “James. It’s Clayton. Don’t stay on the phone too long, okay, and don’t say a word to him about what you saw today!”

  James nodded as he got up from the table and took the receiver from his father’s hand. He then grabbed the phone from the small table it sat on in the hallway and pulled it inside his room, closing the door behind him.

  The next morning, James awoke very early after a night of restless sleep interrupted by nightmares of Manny Fleischman’s beating in the park the day before. When he walked into the kitchen, his momma stood at the stove. James took his seat while she continued stirring a boiling pot. She didn’t speak nor turn to greet him with a “good morning” as she always did. It was as if she knew, he thought, what he was about to tell her. James watched her robotic-like moves as she pulled the pot from the burner and very deliberately dished out hot cereal into a bowl. When done, she grabbed the heaping bowl and placed it in front of him.

  Gazing at the steaming porridge, James felt his heart quicken in his chest. It took him a minute to find his voice. “Momma,” he muttered, “I’ve decided I’m going to go tell the police what I saw.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Being a cop on the South Side of Chicago in the early seventies was a job for the very brave—or the very foolhardy. The 21st District, known to its officers as simply “The Prairie,” was one particular police precinct on the city’s South Side considered an especially forbidding war zone. Predominantly black, this section of the city a few miles south of Chicago’s famous Loop included some of the city’s poorest housing and was home to some of the most incorrigible citizens of the Windy City.

  The Prairie possessed one of the more irregular police district boundaries: 61st Street on its southern end, 14th Street on its north, and Lake Michigan on its east. On its west side, The Prairie jutted as far as the Penn Central and the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railroad tracks, then narrowed down to Cottage Grove Avenue as it moved south. Quite large, The Prairie held numerous neighborhoods with such names as Bronzeville, Douglas, Oakland, and Hyde Park. Also within it borders: the iconic Burnham Park.

  Edward Hanley, a detective in Area 1’s Aggravated Assault Unit, arrived to work at his usual time. He occupied one of the desks on the second floor at the 51st Street and Wentworth Avenue detective division headquarters. His desk was in a massive room containing many desks, all facing back-to-back in several adjoining rows. Area 1 encompassed five police districts, including the 21st.

  He strode immediately to the pot of coffee sitting on a beat up, wooden cupboard, a relic left over from the 1920s. Disheveled, sporting uncombed hair with an unknotted necktie over an open-collared, badly wrinkled dress shirt, he grabbed his Chicago White Sox coffee mug and poured a cup. His partner, Detective Timothy Boscorelli, seated at his desk a few feet away, was already on his second cup of joe.

  The duo, known to all their coworkers as “Stick” and “Timbo,” called Area 1 their home away from home. Both had graduated on the same day, almost a decade earlier, from “dick school,” the name cops affectionately called the police department’s detective academy. As well, both were
born and raised on Chicago’s far South Side. Stick’s Irish Catholic family had served the Chicago Blue for four generations. Timbo’s Italian-American father had been the first Boscorelli on the force. Over the past eight years, Stick and Timbo had become two of Chicago’s toughest and most streetwise cops—and best friends.

  Timbo always had a smart remark first thing in the morning for his bleary-eyed partner. When he wanted to get a rise out of Stick, Timbo would call into question his athletic partner’s baseball skills. As Area 1’s softball team captain, the lanky Irishman loved to play the game, always leading his team in hitting—hence his well-deserved nickname.

  “Too much coffee makes your bat speed slower, Stick.”

  “Fuck you, Timbo,” Stick replied, not even looking up from his java pour.

  “No, honest, Stick. I just read in the most recent AMA journal that coffee drinkers have a reflex response time three-times slower than non-coffee drinkers.”

  “Double fuck you, Timbo, because first of all, what the hell are you doin’ reading a fuckin’ AMA journal? And second, why ya always messin’ with me when you know I worked security last night at Comiskey? Was it a full moon last night? There were some seriously crazy guys out there. Me and O’Hara musta thrown out at least twenty idiots.”

  Overtime pay for homicide dicks didn’t exist, so most guys ran up huge amounts of comp time they had to use or lose. Most worked second jobs, like security at local sports venues. These side jobs not only helped make ends meet but for many carried a stronger incentive: moonlighting gave a guy an excuse from staying home with the wife. Cop marriages, especially in Homicide, had a high rate of failure. Stick’s, thankfully, wasn’t one of them—yet. Timbo’s, on the other hand, was definitely on the rocks.

  Stick took a sip of his coffee then stopped. “Did you make this shit? Almost ten years we’ve been together. When the fuck you gonna learn how to make a decent goddamn pot of coffee?”