A Dark Matter (15 page)

He grinned and raised his hands:
Hey, you got me
.

“Melissa knew this kid. Turned out the kid was a sort of big-time facilitator. From a big, serious family. Lot of money flowing into the country, lots of money flowing out. If I could help him with a distribution issue, I’d make enough to get off the road and settle down somewhere. I thought I’d maybe write a book.”

He winked at me. “The stuff about erotic magic was all straight truth, by the way, and Melissa did go and blab to big fat Maggie Hopgood about all the orgasms she was having, but she threw in some stuff about the distribution setup, and that’s why the boys dragged me away in the cold, cold mornin’.”

“A drug deal.”

“Let’s just say, my get-rich-quick scheme didn’t pan out. From now on, I stick to honest labor and the kindness of friends.”

“Is this where we get to business?”

Don Olson racked his knife and fork. His plate now held only a bone, a knot of gristle, and brown smears. “A minute ago, you said you were still curious about Spencer and the old days.”

I said nothing.

“You tried to get the Eel to tell you what happened that day in the meadow?”

I held my silence.

“I’m not surprised. It’s a hell of a topic. You guys must have spent a lot of time with the police.”

“They were interested in what I might have heard about Keith Hayward. If he had enemies, stuff like that. All I knew was that my girlfriend hated his guts. Which I wasn’t about to say.”

“Hootie hated him, too.”

“Later on, did Spencer ever say anything about Hayward?”

Now it was Olson’s turn to let a question hang in the air.

“I did a little research, and some pretty interesting stuff turned up. Do you remember hearing about the Ladykiller, back around 1960?”

“Hayward couldn’t have been the Ladykiller,” Olson said, firmly. “He had a whole different bag.”

“I’m not saying he was. But he had a connection to the murders, and I have the feeling that he had at least some kind of effect on whatever happened out there in the meadow.”

“Ask that gorgeous Miss Thang for the check,” Olson said. He looked up and regarded the ceiling for a couple of seconds. “To get me back on my feet, I need, hey, a thousand dollars.” He grinned. “Of course, the amount is up to you.”

“On the way to my place we can stop at an ATM. And yes, the amount is up to me.” I waved at the waitress and pretended to scribble in the air. She brought the check, and I handed her a credit card. Olson leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. He never took his eyes from my face. It must have cost him something to keep from eyeing the entrance. After I added a tip and tore off the receipt, I stood up and stared at the floor for a little while. Olson continued regarding me.

I met his gaze. “I’ll give you five hundred.”

Olson stood up without taking his eyes off mine. Smiling an annoying lopsided smile, he moved toward the entrance with a sloping, sidling walk that insinuated a trace of criminality and an underlying degree of physical strength. It seemed a kind of unspoken rebuke. Several of the remaining patrons kept their eyes on Olson, making sure he was really leaving.

The bright dazzle of Chestnut Street seemed lighter, less ponderous than the atmosphere we had just left. “What did you do in there before I showed up?”

“Shook ’em up a little,” Olson said, grinning at the memory.

“So I gather.”

“When my first margarita came up, I had me a little taste and said, ‘In the joint you can get any kind of drug you can name, only it’s like tequila was wiped off the face of the earth, which is pretty fuckin’ strange when you consider how many Mexican motherfuckers are doing time.’ Then I started talking about you, but the damage was done.”

I steered my companion north onto Rush Street, and for a couple of minutes Olson fell silent to inspect both the people around them and the spaces between the people. Being outside, I saw, increased his sense of threat. Chicago’s usual gridiron charge and swerve occupied the sidewalks. Olson did not excite notice until we paused for a traffic light, when several people moved away from his odor.

“I didn’t expect so much hostility out here in the land of the free.”

“A shower and a change of clothes will fix that. I’m amazed you can’t smell yourself.”

“On the bus everybody smelled this way.”

Two more blocks took us to the Oak Bank, and I stopped in front of the ATM machine. Before I could pull out my wallet, Olson whispered, “Let’s go into the lobby, okay?”

He was nodding like a bobblehead doll. Transacting our business out on the street ramped up his anxiety.

“We’re in no danger here.”

“Must be nice to feel that way,” Olson said.

I took him into the lobby and led him toward the row of ATM machines. A bearded kid with a backpack was punching numbers into the machine at the far right, and a guy who looked like he might once have been a college lacrosse player—broad back, short hair, starched blue shirt, pressed chinos—was withdrawing money from an ATM near the center of the row. I moved toward the machine two openings to the lacrosse player’s left, but Olson stepped in front of me and, like a sheepdog, guided me to the last machine in the line.

“You have no idea how many ways people can figure out your ATM number just by watching you. Trust me.”

I extracted my card from my wallet. Olson posted himself like a bodyguard at my shoulder. I brought the card to the lip of the slot and paused. “Hmmm …”

Olson stepped back and twisted his neck to look at me.

I pushed my card in and immediately pulled it back out. Olson made a show of looking away while I tapped in the code numbers. “I wish I knew why I said I’d give you five hundred bucks.”

“I’ll tell you, if you really want to know.”

While the screen asked me what I wanted to do now that I had its attention, I swung around sideways and raised my eyebrows in silent demand.

“Because I asked for a thousand.”

While bills shuttled out of the ATM, he tilted his head, propped his left elbow in the palm of his right hand, and snapped his fingers.

Olson folded his twenties and fifties into the front pocket of his jeans. “People tend to act in certain specific ways. Spencer had it all figured out. You always ask for twice as much as you really want.”

A few minutes later, the two of us turned into Cedar Street. After a quick, darting inspection of the terrain, Olson remarked that I sure did live on a beautiful block. Past the restaurants bordering Rush Street, handsome row houses and residential buildings extended eastward beneath the shelter of great trees toward the bright blue immensity of Lake Michigan. For some reason, he stepped off the sidewalk and began to walk toward a semicircular asphalt drive curving up toward the glass entrance of a tall apartment building that, although contemporary in style, fit in perfectly with the comfortable affluence of its surroundings. I had spent a significant portion of my life in that building.

I asked Olson where he was going.

Puzzled, Olson looked back over his shoulder. “Isn’t that where you live?” He jerked a thumb at the apartment building.

“No. What makes you think so?”

“Some kind of instinct, I guess.” He looked sharply up at me. “To tell you the truth, I once spent some time in that building. A girlfriend of Mallon’s let us stay there when she was out of town. But I swear, that’s not the reason. I had this
feeling …
” Olson brought a hand to his forehead and peered up at me. “Usually, I’m right about stuff like this. Not this time, huh?”

I shook his head. “I lived in that building for twelve years. Moved out in 1990. That’s where I wrote
The Agents of Darkness
and the three books after it. I wonder how you …”

“I’m not a complete fake,” Olson said, appearing to be confused about some central point. “But if you moved out in 1990, why are we here?”

“I moved right across the street, to number twenty-three.” I pointed at my four-story brownstone with a shining red door and two rows of clean modern windows on the upper floors. Despite the competition offered by its handsome neighbors, I had always considered it the best-looking building on Cedar Street.

“You must be doing pretty good,” Olson said. “What apartment did you live in over there?”

I struggled against the impulse to conceal information from him. “Nine A. It was a nice place.”

“Same apartment as the one Mallon and I borrowed from the girl. Nine A—right down at the end of the hallway.”

“Now you’re starting to freak me out. I first heard about the building from my wife.” I took out my keys as we moved toward my red door.

“Why are you being so generous with me?” Olson asked, maddeningly. “Forget that shit about getting half of what you ask for. You didn’t have to give me five hundred bucks, and for sure you don’t have to let me into this house. It’s not like I expect you to give me everything I want.”

“Is that right?”

“I just got out of prison, man, we were never really
close
close friends, and you’re gonna let me walk into this amazing house?” He tilted his head to look up at the brick facade and its rows of shining windows. “You and the Eel live here alone? With all this space?”

“We live alone.”

“Only now even she isn’t here.”

I could not help it, I flared out. “If you’re afraid to come in, go across Rush and check into the local flophouse.” I pointed down the street and across the busy avenue, where a yuppie bar seemed to be supporting a sagging residence hotel for derelicts, identified by a big Jetsons-in-Miami neon sign as the Cedar Hotel.

“I’m not afraid of your
house,”
Olson said. This, I understood, was almost but not quite the literal truth. “And believe me, I’ve stayed in that fleabag more times than you can imagine. But what the fuck do you really want from me?”

I inserted the long key into the enormous lock, then swung the red door open onto a wide vestibule with rosewood walls, a Shiraz rug, and a Chinese vase filled with fleshy-looking calla lilies. “For one thing,” I said, offering the first rational thing that came to mind, “I’d like to hear about Brett Milstrap.” This statement, which I had uttered without benefit of any sort of thought or consideration, startled me. If I had paused to think about it, I would have said that I had long ago forgotten the name of the second fraternity boy who had been in Spencer Mallon’s adoration circle.

Infuriatingly, Olson stopped moving just before he would have walked through the door. “When am I supposed to have met Brett
Milstrap?”
Incapable of restraining himself, he looked down to the corner we had turned and retraced our steps: the conflict between his urgency to escape into the house and his reluctance to enter it froze him to the cement stoop. This was maddening to behold.

Shaking his head, Don finally walked across my threshold. For a moment he glanced into the living room, then up at the angular staircase, attempting to adjust, I supposed, to the nature of his surroundings. The staircase and the gleaming warmth of silver and polished wood in the living room probably invited and repelled him in equal measure.

“How many rooms you got in this place?”

“Twelve or fourteen, depending on how you count.”

“Depending on how you count,” Olson muttered, and began to place his feet on the intertwined long-stemmed tulips woven into the central runner.

“Tell me,” I asked from the top of the stairs, “were your encounters with Milstrap accidental, or was he looking for you?”

“Everybody thinks I have all these answers. Which I don’t, by the way.”

The staircase opened into a roomlike mezzanine space furnished with a desk, a handsome leather chair, cut flowers in a straight-sided vase, and bookshelves flanking the side of the staircase in its ascent to the third floor. A dim, book-lined hallway led into the depths of the house.

“If you ever get in trouble,” Olson said, “make sure your lawyer arranges house arrest.”

Olson leaned against the top of the railing, narrowed his eyes, pursed his lips. A wave of goatish body stink floated from him as if misted through a secret valve.

“While you’re taking a shower, I’ll find you some clothes. Drop what you’re wearing in the hamper. By the way, what’s your shoe size?”

Olson looked down at his battered, mud-colored sneakers. “Ten and a half. Why?”

“I believe this might be your lucky day,” I said.