Free The Fifth Floor by Michael Harvey Page A

me?”
    “I know it was you, Fred. No one else knew I was looking at Woods.”
    Fred Jacobs could lie with the best of them. At six-thirty on a Saturday morning, maybe not so well. “Okay, Kelly. It might have slipped out.”
    “I bet.”
    “Sorry.”
    Across the line I could hear the scratch of a match followed by a smooth inhale. Jacobs had lit up his first heater of the day.
    “What do you expect?” he said, and blew smoke through the receiver. “You know how this stuff works. Besides, you love being down there.”
    “You think so?”
    “Hell, yeah. You got the itch, Kelly. Just no badge anymore to scratch it with.”
    “Thanks, Fred. I’ll write that down. Next time, just try a little harder to hold up your end of things.”
    “Don’t worry about that.” Jacobs’ voice puckered at the mere thought of his not living up to the journalist’s code of ethics. A code he had just admitted to trampling not ten seconds earlier.
    “Okay, Fred. I need a little more info.”
    “Knew that was coming.”
    “It’s painless. An old Sun-Times reporter named Rawlings Smith. You know him?”
    “This have to do with my story?”
    “Could be.”
    Jacobs thought about that for a second. Trying to figure out how he could get his scoop without waiting on me.
    “He’s in Joliet,” the reporter said. “Working at a paper called the Times.”
    “Never heard of it.”
    “Not exactly The New York Times. In fact, it doesn’t even rate in Joliet. And that ain’t good.”
    Another draw on the cigarette and a gurgle in the lungs.
    “How’d he wind up there?” I said.
    “Not sure.”
    “You heard things?”
    “I always hear things.”
    “Bad things?”
    “If they were good, a guy like me wouldn’t hear ’em.”
    “No details, huh?”
    “You going to see Smith?”
    “Thinking about it.”
    “Ask him yourself. I don’t know the guy, so I’ll stay out of it.”
    I figured that was decent of Jacobs. Or as close to decent as this reporter was likely to get. “Thanks, Fred. I’ll let you know when I have something.”
    I punched off and called directory assistance for Joliet, Illinois. There was no listing for Rawlings Smith. I called down to the Joliet Times. A sleepy female picked up on the fifth ring. I told her a reporter named Smith had left me his card and wanted to interview me for a story. She told me the guy I was looking for worked weekends and would be in at nine. I smiled for a second time, got out of bed, and got dressed.
     
***
     
    JOLIET IS ABOUT forty miles outside of Chicago. Famous for nothing except its prison. Remember Joliet Jake from the Blues Brothers? He did his time inside Joliet’s Stateville lockup, home to two thousand of Illinois’ worst. I cruised past the big walls and kept moving. The Joliet Times was located in a storefront downtown. At the back of the empty newsroom was a cubicle. Inside it, the old crime reporter I was looking for.
    “Call me Smitty,” he said.
    So I did.
    “Smitty, thanks for taking the time.”
    I had called ahead and told him I wanted to talk. He didn’t ask why, so I didn’t offer. Now he was here. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.
    “Not a problem, Mr. Kelly. What can I do for you?”
    I could see the reporter thirty years prior, brown hair, eyes sketched in blue, sharp features and intelligence everywhere. Now it had all gone to booze and cigarettes. A life swallowed up in a matter of newsprint and missed deadlines.
    “I’m here about an article you wrote.”
    “Been a reporter a lifetime, son. Wrote a lot of articles.”
    From his bottom drawer Smitty pulled out a can of Bud and poured it into a water glass. It was more warm foam than beer, but that didn’t diminish his enthusiasm. Smitty tipped the glass my way and took down half of it in one go.
    “Management doesn’t seem to care much on weekends, so I indulge. You?”
    “No, thanks. How did you get here, anyway?”
    “You mean paradise?”
    “I’m sure it has its moments.”
    He