Maxwell Street Blues Read Online Free PDF

check to give to Pulaski for his services. Pulaski gives Jackass an envelope full of clean paper laundry.”
    Dad licked his index finger and began turning pages. Occasionally, he would stop and write down some names and then resume. At the end of the book, he said, “Snooky had a more complicated system going on with your Milly, and with four other guys called Devil, Chance, Franky, and Butch. I don’t know these guys. The others I remember. Small-time stuff. Most of those guys were pussycats, regular Joes who had cash operations on the side that needed cleaning.”
    “Any drug dealers?”
    Dad sized me up as if about to tear out my throat.
    “Don’t get ticked off. I can’t assume anything.”
    From what we could tell, beginning in March, Devil had started giving Snooky two separate monthly payments of fifteen grand, which were then cleaned through Franky. I knew that meant Swanky Franky’s, a hugely successful hot dog joint and a longtime client of Snooky’s. From Franky’s, the money was split between several bank accounts, later to be wired back into Franky’s account before it was paid out to Franky’s “investors,” Milly, Chance, and Butch.
    “All these account numbers,” Dad said. “That’s what they’ll want. The book should no longer exist—unless you get an emergency.”
    “Tomorrow I’ll go see what Swanky Franky knows,” I said.
    Dad appeared lost in thought until he said, “You see the picture of that college president Tate tossing the first shovelful of dirt? It was like he threw it on my coffin.”
    I didn’t respond. What do you say to someone mourning the world of his grandfather? Then he said, “I’m sorry for scaring the crap out of you. But for chrissake, you gotta think of these things! If you’re gonna investigate murders, you don’t know what kind of bastards you’ll meet. There’s nothing people won’t do for money, Jules.”
    Of course, he was right. I had been too cocky about this business. But for some reason, I didn’t care.

6
    I awoke the next morning thinking about Audrey. Something about the combination of a beautiful woman and violently disturbing artwork I found hard to resist. And as I watched my oatmeal cook in the microwave, I thought our conversation should be resumed—over lunch, perhaps. But first I had to visit Frank to see what he didn’t know.
    On the way to my car, I noticed a black Crown Victoria illegally parked across the street. At ten I arrived at Swanky Franky’s Clark and Halsted location and was surprised to find the door open. A Mexican kid mopping the floor told me in broken English they were not open yet, and I told him in broken Spanish I wanted to see el jefe . I sat at a table and watched the steady flow of pedestrian traffic pass Frank’s front door. You couldn’t find a more perfect place to hide fifteen grand each month. A short, pudgy, gray-haired man emerged from the back wiping his hands on a white apron covered in the pastels of fast food. I recognized Frank from his newspaper ads boasting foie gras hot dogs and fries cooked in duck fat. I could tell by his expression he was going to be a lot of fun. About ten feet from me, he shouted, “We open at eleven o’clock.”
    I introduced myself and said I wanted to talk about Snooky. “He’s a dead fuck and I’m gonna have a line out the door in an hour. That’s all there is to talk about.”
    I guess when you net six figures from liver sandwiches you can talk that way to strangers. “Did you ever examine or question his accounting methods?” Even I knew what a stupid question that was for a guy like Frank.
    “Why the fuck would I? That’s what I paid him for.”
    “So you had no idea he laundered money through all those dead pigs you sell?”
    Frank’s eyes widened, and he looked as if he were choking. “What do you mean?” he whispered.
    “I mean he took someone else’s money and blended it with yours so nobody would notice.” Frank sat down, red-faced and