Mallard of Forethought: A Tale of the Arts Department

“Ducks,” Professor Thomas Skillruud mulled.

“Well, dead ducks,” Art Willows corrected gruffly. “Well, not real dead ducks. Decoys.”

“Ah,” Tom nodded, willing clarity to no avail.

Art hung on the lull for a moment. “Sooo, my grandpa, uh, passed on a month ago…”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Nahhhhh.” The Chicago fireman made it a nasal five syllables. “He died doing what he loved – fell out of a duck blind, and you can’t ask too much more than that, right?”

“You certainly cannot.” Tom assented, puzzling why a sightless man might have been traipsing about wherever it was mallards frequented.

“Any-waaay, you ever heard of the Perdews?”

Tom frowned at the Cobb salad growing ever-warmer on his desk. “I thought they were in the chicken trade.”

Willows laughed. “Nah. This is Charles Perdew – him and his wife—”

“Edna,” Tom murmured.

“That’s right,” Willows piped. “She worked in ducks, er, decoys. Northern Illinois couple – Charles did the carving, she painted the models. There’s a Perdew museum in Henry, and I think maybe one in Peoria.”

Tom himself had bypassed the tantalizingly touted Center for American Decoys at the Peoria Riverfront Museum for George Bellows’ 1918 masterwork Return of The Useless the previous summer. His visiting grandniece at seven failed to be moved by the German abuse of the Belgian citizenry and, in fact, had begged repeatedly to see the “duckies.”

“I do recall now,” he murmured, surfing up the MutualArt auction site. Three of Edna’s decoys were on the online block. “Her Mallard Hen is, I mean, was breathtaking.”

“Sure,” the fireman concurred. “So, my grandpa was a collector – he had about 400 or so. I think there may be some Perdews in there. I was a kid, we’d get out to his place in Lake County, and I thought the ducks were pretty cool, which was my mistake, ‘cause Gramps wound up leaving me the whole freakin’ collection. Why I called you.”

“Ah,” Tom nodded, sporking a nugget of bleu cheese. “I have to admit, my forte is oils and watercolors, landscapes and portraits. I do know some fine folk art experts and art auctioneers.” Translated: I have Google, too.

“We got a little hassle with the executor, old fart buddy of Gramps. And that’s why I called you. Executor’s a guy named Devon Douglas. Used to be with the University, worked with you. I mean, I understand…”

“Yes,” Professor Skillruud confirmed grimly. “I am familiar with Professor Douglas.”

Devon was a glory hog, exploiting the grunt-work of grad students, piggybacking on colleagues’ research and notes. Devon fashioned himself a sort of Hemingway-by-proxy, leveraging academic and art side-hustles to fund charters that could guarantee tarpons on the study wall and near-scrapes in the bear-forward wilds of British Columbia.

“Look, Professor,” Willows sighed. “I’m coming down for a couple days’ training sessions with your Millington guys, and I was wondering if we could just talk and maybe I show you something. I’m told you like a good mystery.”

Devon, Tom thought.

**

Tom studied the duck on the white linen. It was past well-done, in fact damned near charred.

“And you found this, where?”

“I didn’t find it,” Assistant Chief Fire Investigator Arthur Willows responded a second before totally masticating his penne alfredo. “Lot of us guys in Arson accumulate a ton of stuff like this. This one was in my office when the promotion came in, and I finally tracked it back to the ‘20s, Prohibition era. It was salvaged from a sausage factory run by a Polish family down on the Chicago with most of the other meatpackers, machinery manufacturers, steel production.

“And this factory was a total loss?” Tom inquired, glancing at the black mallard. “Because if this were found at the scene, I wouldn’t imagine it would be recognizable.”

“Good eye. My guess is, this was well away from the point of ignition, in an office or hallway or something. Even back then, the guys said the cause was easy to locate.”

“Was there an accelerant?” Tom had bypassed Nature and NOVA the previous evening and instead binge-viewed the Chicago Fire Department series.

“Barrel of rags soaked in kerosene. No attempt to make it look like an accident, and the Krawkalskis swore the decoy wasn’t theirs or a worker’s. If anything, it looked like a mob thing. Josef and Karina Krawkalski were small potatoes, and though there were Polish gangs and guys like Jake Guzik working with Capone, most of the focus at the time was on bootleg hooch. The Krawkalskis were clean as a whistle, and the feds who were watching the gangs and especially Capone said everybody was alibied for the night of the fire.”

“You know, decoys were repurposed particularly during Prohibition. I don’t know if your grandfather ever shared that ‘sinkboxes’ – weighted cavities or ballast compartments – were built into some decoys to ensure they remained aright in the water, and bootleggers modified them to include secret compartments for valuables, small amounts of bootleg liquor or counterfeit money, or simply messages to compatriots. May I?”

“Already did,” Willows shrugged, prodding the sooty bird out of Professor Skillruud’s reach. “Nada. What were you thinking?”

“I don’t really know,” Tom said. “But weren’t the Great Lakes a major conduit for bootleg ‘hooch’? And wasn’t much of that hooch distilled in rural environs? My father was interested in gangster culture, and told me Capone liked to get away to hunt and fish. Let’s suppose Capone wanted to hire an arsonist outside the city. What if this contractor received communications through a Trojan decoy left at a pre-designated location along the lakeshore or Illinois River? The decoy contains a hidden compartment with instructions on staging the fire and maybe a message for the Krawkalskis. I told you I didn’t know how I could help.”

Willows waved the server over for the dessert cart. “I ain’t done yet, Tommy. Like an alderman’s DUI, I kinda buried the headline. See, when Gramps let me know he was leavin’ me the decoys, he said there was a little treat I might find interesting. Now what might possibly interest me about a bunch of dead duckies?”

**

“And this is why we’re doing this little buddy road trip thing?” Ethan Cooper queried.

Tom side-eyed the exit sign roughly 45 miles south of their destination ramp. “You presumably have a very special set of skills. I mean, your upbringing on the Great Plains, living off the land. You ever go hunting as a lad?”

“Yeeeah, we’uns lived off the feedlot,” the young sculptor smirked. “I went hunting once -- Pop felt giving me a gun would help reorient me to my inner alpha. I shot out the truck windshield, and we called it a day.”

**

“Thomas, Old Chief,” Devon hailed as an oak door Martin Luther would have loved swung open. “Ah, and this would be your grandson?”

Ethan had the good grace neither to snicker or chortle nor to charge with a leonine roar at the Eddie Bauer-dapper old man with a Hemingway mustache. A comically gargantuan tarpon overlapped the fireplace beyond Douglas’ shoulder.

“At the request of Morton Willows’ grandson, I’ve asked Associate Professor Cooper to lend his expertise in evaluating the decedent’s collection,” Thomas smiled without gnashing. “As you might remember, my expertise is in American realism in a more—”

“One-dimensional mode, yes, yes,” Devon completed.

“Two,” Ethan intervened. “One is impossible, unless you’re doing a microcosmic study of Seurat.”

Douglas appeared only slightly displeased. “Please, do come in.”

Most of the McMansion was filled with nature studies and, in the obligatory paneled den, a panoramic aerial photo of the sprawling grassland/marsh where, Douglas noted, a Northwestern student had found the octogenarian sprawled on the spongy ground, drowned in a shallow pool.

“Mort shouldn’t have been venturing out there at his age,” Devon lamented, “but I’m not one to interfere in another man’s affairs.”

Respect for a good single-malt was all that stayed Tom’s spit-take. “We talked to the Willows’ attorneys, and I was hoping we could do a preliminary appraisal of the collection. In your presence, of course.”

Devon regarded his former colleague. “Sure, of course. In the morning, though. I have a Tribune interview in, oh, about now.”

**

“Yeah, I really don’t get why we’re out here,” Sheriff Greggs repeated for the third time as the professor and Willows eyed the ramshackle wood duck blind flanked by the marsh and a swatch of prairie grass and a solid tree-line. “Been up to my ass in fed business – FBI and the AFT have raided a local landscape nursery, a stable, and a machine shop just the past couple weeks, found a shitload of semi-automatics, meth, and a credit card mill. Getting as bad as the city, Art. But anything for a fellow responder, especially a hometown boy.”

“Speaking of the college kids,” Ethan not-so-subtly transitioned, “the student, the hiker, swears Mr. Willows was alone out here.”

“Saw him coming in and found his body on the way back. Heard him fire off a few in between.”

“Was this usual?” Art inquired, peering at the platform. “I mean, Gramps being out here alone?”

“Well, the blind’s been here for years. But this was a little odd. For Mort, that is. But under the circumstances….”

“And what were the circumstances?” Professor Skillruud asked.

“Well, kinda hate to say, seeing as Mort was usually such a straight arrow. His dad, now, your great-grandpa, Art, he was a bit bent – a poacher. Your pal Devon, his grandpa was a real slickster, had some shady dealings, never saw a corner he wouldn’t cut. Glad you and the professor made good.”

“But what were the circumstances?” Tom repeated.

**

Professor Skillruud rode shotgun, and in a conciliatory gesture, the sheriff palmed a pair of brightly-colored packets from the Expedition’s center console.

“Duck?” Greggs offered, ripping one red-and-yellow wrapper with his teeth.

Tom accepted the confection, struggled to open his gracefully, and peered down. It was, indeed, a duck, in the same manner a Peep was poultry or food. It was also – after a few bites and an examination of the label – revelatory.

**

The Morton Collection was all Tom had expected. If Professor Skillruud had dreamed of being immersed in dead ducks, this was the Illinois Mega-Millions.

“So,” Art concluded.

“Knock yourselves out,” Devon muttered, staring at his screen. “Gotta take this – it’s actually important.”

“So old Morton’s alone in his duck blind,” Tom began after a moment. “Roughly six feet above the ground, pop-up blinds to the front of the structure facing the marsh, the back open to the prairie and woods. Art, how long has your grandfather hunted? Particularly waterfowl?”

“Well,” the arson investigator drawled, “Gramps told me his dad first took him when he was 10, so I guess about 70 years ago. He introduced Dad to the sport when he was 10, and even after Dad moved to Chicago, he’d go hunting with him at least once every fall.”

“Ah. And was Morton a law-abiding hunter?”

“Yeah, kept his IDNR license up to date, always got his state Habitat Stamp and Federal Duck Stamp, and raised hell with the city guys who’d ignore the daily six-duck limit.”

“Art, Northern Illinois’ 2024 duck season ran from October 19 to December 17,” Ethan related. “Your grandpa died a month ago, in early March. More than two months out of season. You said Mr. Willows obeyed hunting regs to the letter.”

“We checked, and turkey, quail, and ring-neck pheasant prefer grasslands or woods well outside the Chicagoland area,” Tom explained. “So given the accepted mythical status of the snipe, if it flies like a duck, hates bullets like a duck, but isn’t a duck, what is it? How about a drone?”

Art stared at the academics. “So, are you saying some punk kid or something killed Gramps because he shot down their toy?”

“Drones can disrupt feeding, nesting, breeding, and migratory patterns, and on occasion collide with migrating birds. Now, Illinois doesn’t regulate drone use as strenuously as it does duck preservation. One doesn’t appear to need a permit for personal robotics, but drones used for commercial purposes generally require FAA registration. Unless, perhaps, one is using drones for illegal purposes.”

Ethan peered about the loft full of facsimile ducks. “We saw a breathtaking aerial shot of the local marshes yesterday. I had to guess, it almost certainly was taken by a drone. The photographer, so to speak, is also a sort of sportsman, usually on a charter boat off the Keys or fly-fishing on the Columbia. My Dad used to waste hours trying to teach me the roll cast, the double-haul, the overhead. Casting in tight spaces, long-distance casting. My guess is your grandpa’s killer is pretty adept at it. You bring your grandpa’s coat like we asked?”

Art handed Tom the muddy, rended-and-mended Carharrt, and the professor inspected the thick brown-duck collar.

“Aha!” Tom beamed, displaying a large, triangular rip. “Note the lining. This is a fresh tear. Like a large high-carbon steel fishing hook might make.”

“Probably filed the barb just below the hook so it would release after he dragged Morton off the platform,” Ethan suggested. “Douglas reels the line in, skillfully avoiding snagging the hook.”

“Luck,” Tom groused.

“Skill,” Devon corrected from the doorway, bringing the shotgun up.

**

“I suppose we can agree to disagree,” Professor Skillruud swallowed. “Our forebearers were desperate men in a changing world, and just like the Prohibition fostered gangsterism in the city, the lure of opportunity was just too much for desperate men. The moonshiner, the backroads speakeasy, the truckers and barge folk. Perhaps even the contract killers and arsonists whose trail ended at the Cook County line.”

Devon’s twin barrels shifted, and Ethan held up a hand. “No gun – I’m an art professor. Just got a little treat for you.” Associate Professor Cooper extracted a small, brightly wrapped parcel from his jacket. “I had a thought about the fire that started all this. The Krawkawlskis had no connection to the Mob, and the decoy presumably left at the scene made utterly no sense. So, what if the Krawkalski fire was a mistake?

“I checked out the old 1920s Chicago city directories to see just who the Krawkalskis neighbors were. You know Ferrero, the giant Italian candy company, still makes Mal-Lards, the dark chocolate duck with the delectable fluffy almond/cherry nougat? Ferrero got a fire sale when the FBI finally made a racketeering case against Chicago Confectioners and Beverage. The Krawkalski fire almost shut them down in 1923.”

“So what are we sayin’, guys?” Willows demanded. “The candy factory was the target?”

“Candy and soda factory,” Ethan noted. “What are the two things you need to make alcohol? Plenty of sugar, and distilling equipment that can be adapted from off-brand colas to whiskey and gin. As the feds began to tighten down on regional bootleggers, a few Windy City entrepreneurs began to make home-brewed hooch under cover of legit business. The DOJ’s indictments against Chicago Confectioners seem to indicate that once they pull you in, you don’t easily get out. Even if Capone tries to burn you out.”

“So how’d Capone’s plan go so awry?” Tom posed. “Sheriff Greggs complained about a rash of recent federal raids on area businesses found to be trafficking in drugs, weapons, counterfeit credit cards, and other illicit materials. One would have to have extensive underworld intelligence or covert spy tech to have tipped the authorities to such diverse activities. ‘Good citizen’ is not a phrase I’d attach to you, Devon. But where the apple falls, as they say…”

“You are definitely going first,” Devon sighed.

“The sheriff characterized your grandfather as an opportunist with Chicago connections. Art, Greggs suggested your great-grandfather was a poacher, part of the reason Morton developed such a strong sense of ethics. Let’s imagine Mr. Capone leaves a phony decoy with a secret compartment for Grandpa Douglas, but Great-Grandpa Willows, out for game, spots a fancy new decoy and swaps it for his own inferior model.

“Douglas finds no instructions in the cheap decoy, but he doesn’t want to ruffle feathers, so he proceeds with his general understanding of the assignment. Except he sets fire to the wrong factory, leaving the wrong duck behind. Meanwhile, Willows’ prize find is eventually forgotten and becomes part of Morton’s collection. I’m surprised you haven’t retrieved it already, Devon. Or do you not even know which one it is?”

Professor Skillruud smiled nastily, turned to eye the hundreds of counterfeit canards lining every shelf, bench, and table. After a moment, he strode to a case near the far window, and upended each duck in turn. He returned with a relatively mint pintail drake under his arm.

“A Perdew. I imagine a man of Capone’s grandiose pseudo-sophistication would insist on the best, even in his extracurricular pursuits.” Tom fiddled, and, with a flourish, slid a panel from the base of the duck. “And, ah, here we are.” A folded, yellowed slip dropped to the plank floor.

Douglas instinctively moved forward, Tom feinted to the left, and tossed the decoy underhanded. Willows intercepted and shot the decoy directly into Devon’s forehead.

“Curie Condors, Baby!” Art whooped.

**

“Some good guessin’ there, guys,” Art commended after emerging from his smothered country-fried steak. The diner was packing up for the supper crowd, and he waggled his mug Ackroyd-style for some more java.

“Though I should admonish you for being less than forthcoming with me,” Tom smiled.

Art slumped back against the banquette. “Wha’d I do?”

“I noted you were reluctant to allow me to so much as touch the Krawkalski decoy. After three cups of coffee, I took advantage of your absence to examine the evidence a bit further. That’s when I spotted the ‘RW’ carved into the base. Roosevelt Willows, I eventually surmised. You were afraid your own great-grandfather might have been Capone’s hired torch, weren’t you?”

Art shrugged. “Chicago.”