Free Windy City Blues by Marc Krulewitch Page B

to a corner of the bed, then sat back down. “When I am medicated, this is how I act.”
    I would have apologized but I didn’t think he’d care one way or the other. “May I ask how you behave when you’re not medicated?”
    Baxter got off the bed and walked to the keyboard, where he stood next to me and pushed a few buttons that introduced an African beat accompaniment to the invisible child’s random note playing. Baxter returned to his cleared-off spot on the bed and said, “Uh, yes, I am told my behavior is paranoid and that I am quick to anger.”
    “Are you schizophrenic?”
    “That’s what doctors say.”
    “Have you ever been arrested because of your anger?”
    “I believe so.”
    “Maybe three or four times?”
    “That sounds right.”
    “Why did you go off your medication?”
    “I didn’t go off my medication.”
    “But you said you had been arrested three or four times for anger.”
    “Yes. But I always take my medication. The police monitor my treatment. If I didn’t take my medication, I would be in violation.”
    I rubbed my forehead. “Okay. Do you have a car parked in this neighborhood?”
    “Yes.”
    “And you acquired enough parking tickets to get on the city’s tow list?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why didn’t you pay them?”
    Baxter’s eyes narrowed and he started shaking his head. “I—I never got those tickets. They said I did but I didn’t.”
    “Four times the city came to tow your car? Each time your medication failed to prevent your anger? Each time you threatened an officer and were arrested?”
    “So I’ve been told. And I have been shown records of this behavior taking place.”
    “But you don’t actually remember these incidents?”
    “Not details. Only a commotion taking place then waking up in bed.”
    “Did you kill the parking officer Jack Gelashvili, who lived on the third floor of this building?”
    “No.”
    “You are on record for threatening parking officers, yet the police didn’t question you. Doesn’t that seem strange?”
    Baxter’s eyeballs bounced around the room. “I didn’t kill anybody. Why would they ask me any questions?”
    On the one hand, it was heartening to see Baxter functioning independently with the help of medication. On the other hand, his vulnerability to exploitation had no limits. I put a business card on the keyboard and thanked him for his time. He said nothing and watched me leave.
    Back home on the couch, I sipped diet ginger ale and thought about calling Tamar. Overall, it had been a good day, but I felt talked out and was content to spend the evening pondering the blatant framing of Gordon Baxter as a potential murderer. It stuck out like the media emperor calling the city editor to kill a story. In Baxter’s entire life, I suspected his medication had failed him only four times. The question remained: who would go to such great lengths to set up Baxter as the fall guy for Gelashvili’s murder, and why?

17
    The next morning I returned to Budlong Woods. I wanted a few more words with parking officer Rich Jones and hoped to find him again in the same neighborhood. Instead I met a Latino boy who looked barely out of high school. First he shrugged and then he pointed east and said in broken English that Jones was working in Edgewater, a neighborhood directly east that bordered the lake.
    I took Foster to Kenmore where I turned north and quickly found a parking place. Since it was a nice day I didn’t mind strolling this historic community with an architecture as eclectic as its demographics. Tree-lined blocks of one-story brick cottages mixed with high-rises, mid-rises, and two-, three-, and four-story stone flats with courtyards.
    I spotted Rich a few blocks away on Magnolia, walking toward me along a row of parked cars. His furrowed brow and downward gaze told me he was deep in thought and had no idea someone stood directly in his path. When he was about a car length away I said, “Hey, officer, this isn’t a