Free Maxwell Street Blues by Marc Krulewitch Page B

care what you do.”
    Mildish stared at me and sort of smiled. “That’s the attitude I was hoping for. I’m not convinced you can maintain it, but for now I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”
    “You don’t trust me.”
    “Do you trust me?”
    “It would be bad for business to trust you.”
    “Touché!” Mildish said and laughed loudly. Then he reached into his breast pocket and produced a billfold. He counted out some cash and handed it to me. “Will this cover the cost of a new gun?” I looked at the seven hundred-dollar bills, handed two of them back to Mildish. “Now we’re even,” I said.

19
    I came home with a Glock .40-caliber and called my father. I told him what was up with Kalijero and about my meetings with Baron and Mildish. He sounded tired but enjoyed hearing about Kalijero’s troubles. Mildish troubled him.
    “Mildish scares me. While he’s shaking your hand, he’s picking your pocket.”
    “Tate’s the one that’s really squirming,” I said. “The others might conveniently forget things, but Tate’s the true liar. It sounds like he panicked, and Snooky ended up dead.”
    “Who pulled the trigger?”
    “I don’t know. Guys like Tate don’t get their hands dirty.”
    “You think his kid has anything more to say?”
    “I think she does, but I don’t know when it will come out. Daddy is a professor after all.”
    “Don’t forget blackmail. I doubt Tate had the final say on a multimillion-dollar contract. You said that yourself when I first came over.”
    He was right. Trustees would have to give the go-ahead. I felt a renewed appreciation for my father’s experience in corruption.
* * *
    Tate’s house was a three-story brownstone across the street from a large park on a bluff above Lake Michigan. A few decades ago, this building housed three middle-class families. Today you would find couples with seven-figure incomes living their renovated fantasies of stainless steel double sinks, kitchen islands, recessed lighting, and home theaters. I didn’t know what I would accomplish by staking out his house on a Saturday afternoon, but the park was well shaded and a nice breeze blew off the lake.
    From a picnic table, I sat and focused my camera on the house. I zoomed in on the enormous plate glass window and then examined the solid wood door. I put myself in Tate’s shoes as a wealthy, educated, middle-aged man running a large public university. An opportunity presented itself for easy money. He got one of the trustees in on it, maybe the comptroller or the treasurer. His Chicago Yacht Club dream was closer than ever.
    Then he started to worry, felt vulnerable. Or the trustee started to sweat, started to wonder who knew what and how it could be used against him. The trustee started leaning on Tate to do something. Tate revealed his fears to Mildish and Baron, who both dismissed the neophyte’s anxiety. He would get no relief from these two seasoned, well-connected veterans of the game. And how did he know he was not being played for thefool? How did he know Mildish and Baron wouldn’t sell him down the river? He lay awake at night thinking his whole life, everything he had worked for, would be destroyed and his name would just be another added to the long list of imprisoned Illinois luminaries.
    Tomorrow I would check Tate’s trail of parking tickets to see if they led somewhere. Perhaps I would have to look Tate in the eye and present his worst-case scenario until he shit himself. I played with these thoughts awhile longer, only to gradually drift far off-subject to the carefree summer afternoons of my youth. I blamed the cooling lake breeze for casting this nostalgic spell, which ended abruptly with a male voice asking, “Mind if I sit?”
    I turned to see a square-headed man with a double chin and one hell of a comb-over sitting on the end of the bench. He wore gray dress slacks and a silk shirt unbuttoned to the top of his protruding belly. A can of root beer